


mille plagas, mille mortes adducite vos

by ernestdummkompf (JehanFerres)



Category: Il trovatore - Verdi/Cammarano
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 04:01:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28806975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JehanFerres/pseuds/ernestdummkompf
Summary: a slightly more historically accurate version of verdi'sil trovatore. only slightly, mind.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 1





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so after writing my last _trovatore_ fic i realised that i wanted to make it MORE historically accurate, even though this is probably going to end badly because that opera is n o n s e n s e. this is the result of that, that i am writing as i go along. the title comes from the opening chorus of vivaldi's oratorio _juditha triumphans_ , which is about judith slaying holofernes. it means _a thousand directions, to bring you a thousand deaths_.
> 
> if you are wondering about this, i would also encourage you to investigate a more euphemistic meaning of "death". once again: di luna trans, manrico also trans. however, in keeping with actual history, manrico is a few years older than di luna, who was born after his "sister" went missing.

Count of Luna was very much not the title for which Fadrique di Luna had at any point been hoping for. As the eldest — and only — son of the now-deceased King Martin of Sicily it also just made sense for him to then become the King of Sicily. The nobles of Sicily agreed too, despite the circumstances of Di Luna’s birth. Even his grandfather, King Martin of Aragon, whose wife had been mostly responsible for his upbringing and education (and from whose household he had gained his closest ally) had agreed that he should have been the King of Sicily.

The issue, however, was one half of the circumstances of his birth.

King Martin the Elder had been an ever-constant husband to his wife Maria di Luna, from whom Di Luna had inherited his title. On the other hand, Martin the Younger had had a collection of concubines and very little interest in his wife, or, when it came to it, in being a good father. His first child to live past two years, a daughter called V—, had been sent away to live with Martin the Younger’s mother and when Di Luna had been born, about ten months after V— had disappeared, much the same had happened to him. There had been some talk there about the two children moving permanently to Zaragoza, where Di Luna now lived, but Martin the Elder had wanted the two children close, and so had his wife.

Di Luna had never had much to do with his father, not that he hadn’t sometimes felt that he should have, since the former King had believed so strongly that he should have an heir that he had apparently gone behind his wife’s back and been prepared to have a female heir, breaking strongly with tradition. (This was no longer an issue, but that Martin the Younger would ever know that.) He had also never had anything to do with V—.

He hadn’t ever actually met V—, which was strange, especially considering that neither his father nor his grandfather had ever let up believing that he some day would. In fact, Di Luna suspected that she would probably have been Martin the Elder’s preferred candidate for an heir and that he was more just doing his best with what was left to him. It was difficult, certainly, living up the expectations of the ghost of a child who had died before he could even form memories. He supposed that was probably why she had been the favourite — no opportunity to turn out as a disappointment that way, not that Di Luna hadn’t tried not to be a disappointment. He found people difficult and would rather either be left to his own devices or only be around people that he specifically chose.

His grandfather, after his father’s ignominious death, certainly hadn’t tried very hard to have Di Luna legitimised. The rank that Di Luna had felt he had deserved — both the Kingdoms of Sicily and Aragon — had gone to two of Di Luna’s cousins — one who he had never actually had anything to do with and one called Ferdinand, who… well. Ferdinand had had poor luck and his poor management of the Kingdom of Aragon had lead to a country that was on the brink of civil war at best, certainly not what Di Luna’s grandfather had left behind him when he had died, but there wasn’t really anything much that Di Luna could do about that. He wasn’t going to try to start a civil war, but, well, he wasn’t above finishing one.

There just wasn’t one going on just yet.

Di Luna not being legitimised had lead to that and that was something that he tried very hard not to blame himself for, because there wasn’t much that he, at about ten years old, could really have done. He couldn’t imagine that a Queen of Aragon or Sicily, in her own right, would have been viewed too positively, even if Di Luna’s father had supported him.

He wasn’t sure that Martin the Elder of Aragon would have been quite so supportive of the fact that Di Luna had since transitioned, but, well, that wasn’t really his decision to make, was it, especially not when it weighed so heavily on Di Luna’s happiness. And it wasn’t as though Di Luna didn’t have supporters now that he was nearly thirty years old. (Or he had one supporter, but that was better than not having any supporters.) Ferrando was technically still attached to his grandmother’s household, but that “technically” was doing a lot of heavy lifting — he had rarely been there because he had been off helping Martin the Younger in his wars and even now that Martin the Younger was dead he preferred the flow of things at the court in Zaragoza. Di Luna’s grandmother had also died quite a while ago and a menial soldier raised to the rank of somebody just below a knight hadn’t really appealed to Di Luna’s stepgrandmother — she hadn’t been particularly interested in making war, anyway, so Ferrando had ended up essentially being “given” to Di Luna.

He couldn’t think why his grandfather’s second wife wouldn’t have wanted Ferrando around, because quite aside from everything else he was useful. But he was glad that Ferrando had gone with him instead of trying to wheedle his way into Blanche of Navarre’s household — it just wasn’t his style, for one thing, but also he wanted to be a soldier and not stuck behind a desk organising guards for a household — because Ferrando was just about the only person keeping him sane at this point.

They hadn’t been close in his youth, mostly because Ferrando was eleven years older than Di Luna and there wasn’t much point expecting a young adult to want anything much to do with a preteen, even if that preteen was probably going to be the person in charge of them in the not-too-distant future. But Ferrando had had other problems back then and Di Luna was honestly more than a little glad that he hadn’t been party to any of them: Ferrando had been happy being mostly left alone, and Di Luna had been happy mostly leaving him alone. They spent plenty of time together now, of course, because they were both adults and frankly Di Luna trusted Ferrando’s military judgment more than he trusted that of any of his “advisors”, but when they had been younger they practically hadn’t know each other.

There was, Di Luna knew, something that other people found strange about Ferrando. They liked to tell him as much, even if Di Luna didn’t really care what other people thought about him. And Di Luna didn’t disagree that he was unusual — he had a strange way of speaking to others and he didn’t seem to seek them out in the same way as most people, not that Di Luna did either — but that wasn’t really something that affected Di Luna’s opinion of him one way or the other. He could be as odd as he liked, if he kept producing the same results and the army continued functioning with him as an officer. Di Luna couldn’t really criticise his methods because it wasn’t something that he knew too much about. He would have preferred just to run into the enemy with a sword, if he was given the choice, so the fact that somebody he knew he could trust was both keen and able to do the administrative duties left him free to do what he liked.

Still, the prevailing theory amongst the men (as far as Ferrando had told him) was that Ferrando was a changeling, or maybe a vampire or other sort of dangerous beast. Depending upon his mood, Ferrando would either entertain these rumours or shut them down outright. Neither really seemed to do much for the rumour mill in either direction and it wasn’t as though it was something that particularly upset Ferrando, from what Di Luna knew of him, so he wasn’t going to tell any of the men off for it as long as Ferrando didn’t seriously tell them off. Even if he was either a changeling or a vampire he was a particularly good soldier, and a good administrator even if Di Luna sometimes wondered why he wouldn’t want to be out doing things if that was what he liked to do, which he apparently did.

It wasn’t as though Di Luna couldn’t see where the men were coming from with Ferrando being some sort of supernatural being, either, but, well, he was quite sure that he had very different feelings about that to how the majority of the men felt. The older men especially were superstitious and were suspicious of Ferrando, who told Di Luna that he used that to his advantage and would threaten to turn them, or to steal their grandchildren if he was feeling particularly unpleasant towards them, although this was something that Di Luna himself had never seen. When he visited the men were always on their best behaviour, so he never saw any cruelty from them, but he certainly wasn’t going to disbelieve Ferrando’s own accounts. Nor was he going to disbelieve that Ferrando was also able to deal with him himself, because he hadn’t had anything unpleasant happen to him, or he hadn’t had anything unpleasant happen to him as a result of it. (Or at least, not yet. Di Luna did think that he was going to anger somebody to the extent that he got himself at the very least punched in the face.)

Also, well, there was something about Ferrando that Di Luna couldn’t quite put his finger on. He had been told by his grandmother, who was very keen on mythology, that vampires were very appealing to mortals and that changelings somehow affected their parents to force them to want to care for them even if they despised them and knew that they weren’t their child so maybe those abilities could extend into adulthood. Also — and there was no way to say this without implying that Di Luna had spent at least a little while staring at Ferrando’s mouth — if he opened his mouth in a way that made his teeth visible they did seem… rather sharper than was entirely appropriate for a strictly human man.

Of course, that would also have implied that Di Luna had actually looked, which he certainly didn’t want to have anybody thinking, but he certainly found himself far more curious about Ferrando than he ever had been about anybody before. Even his wife, who he had thought throughout their “courtship” (if it could even be called that — she had been told that she was going to marry a nobleman and had probably resigned herself to a loveless and sexless marriage that wouldn’t produce children, although she had confessed that she didn’t mind the idea of not having children) that he was in love with her. He probably wasn’t, and he would probably find that if he had given the idea any thought, but… well, it was a complicated subject, especially since he was a nobleman and he was very keen that everybody see him as a man specifically. Even though he knew that people would pay lip service to his face and call him by the right name he knew that most other nobles not only knew his old name but had known him as a child when he had been presenting as a girl despite knowing that something was wrong.

He hadn’t known how to explain it at the time — how could he have? He was about six years old when he had first started to realise — and he had been too late to completely stop puberty, as he had realised when he was about fifteen years old. He had still managed to have a hysterectomy, though, and that had been extremely painful — he hadn’t been completely conscious during it but he had been conscious for the majority of his recovery. He hadn’t been able to sleep, for one thing. (He had also been greatly questioned why he wanted a hysterectomy, since all it would really do was prevent him from being able to get pregnant and it wasn’t as though he was going to be marrying a man. Now that he wanted to be a man he was going to marry a woman and… well, they’d figure something out.) He hadn’t quite known how to explain how much better he felt once he had completely recovered from the hysterectomy — but apparently it had been clear to the other nobles, even when he was walking around carefully carrying a cane for weeks.

Regardless, he had felt much more settled. This wasn’t to say that he felt completely settled, because he never was — but even Ferrando, who wasn’t particularly observant about the feelings and thoughts of other people, had commented that he seemed a lot less frantic and angry after having a hysterectomy. So it must have been a good thing, or at least broadly a good thing — the pain had been very offputting. There was always a lot going on in his mind, which, he often joked, was a very small space to hold so many thoughts. He rarely had particularly useful thoughts, of course, but there were certainly several going on in there and a lot of them drove him absolutely mad. Leonora didn’t seem to understand either, but Ferrando appeared to — yet another reason that Di Luna preferred Ferrando over his wife, he supposed.

It wasn’t as though his marriage to Leonora was completely sexless either, but that had been more of a strategic move on his part as it meant that the marriage couldn’t be annulled, even though she had said that she had no desire to go through all the rigmarole of getting an annulment. The fact was that Di Luna really needed to be married to a woman, and probably to have some female lovers like his father had had, in order to seem credible to his peers and Leonora was if not somebody he was in love with then somebody that he could tolerate spending the rest of his life with. He supposed that he had thought that he was in love with her mostly because she had been so determined that he wasn’t — the best way to convince him of something was to argue the opposite, which Ferrando was very good at using to his advantage. Now they were just stuck with something that it would have been inconvenient to try to make their way out of and that benefited at least one of them. (And, critically, the one that it benefited more was the one who would have had the power to do something to undo it. So they were going to be staying married whether they liked it or not.)

Besides that, Leonora basically got to be left to her own decides for as long as she liked, if she didn’t annoy Di Luna, which seemed to be about as much as she could have desired even if she didn’t like him. He wanted to be with the other men more than he wanted to be with her, and she wanted to spend time with her companion Ines. They were both happy to allow the other to have time to themselves, so neither of them really seemed to see much of a reason to change anything. It wasn’t as though there were many other options for Di Luna, anyway — most young ladies particularly wanted children (even Di Luna would probably have been open to the idea, if there was some way to have children that wouldn’t involve his biologically carrying or fathering them), and also probably wanted a husband who would be able to actually satisfy them rather than putting up with what Di Luna could physically do.

Leonora was probably the best spouse he could have asked for, under his particular set of circumstances, so they would just have to tolerate each other. That was the best he or Leonora could do — and at least Di Luna could take solace in being actively involved in the military and Leonora could take solace in making friends with the ladies of the Queen of Aragon’s retinue, including the Queen herself. She was a lot more affable and generally normal seeming than her husband, who several people had described as seeming as though he was trying to run in ten different directions as the same time. Some of them had even said that to his face, assuming that he wouldn’t be offended. He was, and he was also not afraid to order that people who mistreated him be punished.

Well, apart from Ferrando, who was welcome to be as rude as he liked to his master, or at least within reason, provided that he continue being more a friend than whatever he was perhaps “supposed” to be. He liked Leonora too, but that was more because they had been shoved together by circumstances and he would never have sought her out had he not been married to her. Ferrando was somebody that he could see himself caring about in the way that he did regardless of their respective ranks. Of course, there was a limit that Ferrando would occasionally test that limit but he hadn’t managed to find it yet. (And Di Luna didn’t think he would mind if he kept trying to figure out what would cause actual annoyance rather than gentle teasing. That seemed like it could have been at least interesting, rather than sitting in awkward silence with Leonora as seemed to keep happening when they tried to spend time together.)

Really, the frustrating part was the fact that he truly felt that he should have been the King of at least Sicily, if not Aragon too. His grandfather had wanted both for him even if he had never really talked to him about it, at least not after what had transpired with V—, and had died shortly after. He couldn’t believe that his grandfather had died of laughter, of all things, either, but he supposed it figured with how ridiculous the old man had been.

That was another reason he was drawn to Ferrando, though. Di Luna had been a baby when V— had disappeared but his father and grandfather had still made him swear as he grew up to seek her, and Ferrando had had the same impossible standard imposed upon him, from what he knew. Ferrando didn’t like to talk about it — he didn’t even like to talk about the fact that he had been promoted as a result of his actions after V— had disappeared, even though it had clearly been to try to make up for the trauma — but he didn’t really need to. Di Luna felt as though what had happened to V— was a burden and he was sure that Ferrando also thought so. Even though they had never exchanged two words about it, he knew that he probably could have broached the subject with Ferrando, and also that nobody else would have been received positively trying to pull the same thing.

He wasn’t stupid, either: he knew that Ferrando was unhappy because of what had happened — because he couldn’t he have been? Finding the half-burned body of a two-year-old that certainly seemed as though it was the child he had been sent to try to ascertain the location of would do that to a person. Unfortunately he didn’t know how best to deal with it — the only way he knew that this was what had happened was because other soldiers had told him after hearing second-hand: the only person Ferrando had ever said what had happened in words to what Di Luna’s father because he had had to. Otherwise it seemed as though that particular experience was one that only Ferrando was allowed to talk about and that he wouldn’t talk about, even if it was only on his terms and therefore that he never wanted to talk about it. Di Luna supposed that it would have to suffice that he would have been happy, hypothetically, to help him deal with how he felt. Ferrando knew, he hoped, but Di Luna couldn’t do anything else when he wouldn’t communicate about it.

This was a problem that Di Luna had too, of course: he didn’t know how to talk to people. He would have said “to people who weren’t Ferrando”, but that wasn’t really true; it was more that between them they just about managed to communicate their feelings. He certainly didn’t know how to talk to Leonora, and he hadn’t ever really figured it out with the members of his family. He had loved his grandmother and certainly respected his grandfather (he had never really formed an opinion of his grandfather’s second wife, but he hadn’t ever needed to. From what he knew she was a kind woman and she seemed to make his grandfather happy in his old age, which was all he could really want), but he had never been able to talk to them. His father, too, had been difficult to communicate with but that was more because of the circumstances of V—’s disappearance and presumable death.

Apparently he had been a very normal man, even though he was a nobleman, before V— died. He had never believed that she was dead, of course, but it was the obvious conclusion and even Ferrando, to whom he had become quite close by that point, had withdrawn from him because he was barely coping with his own trauma, let alone King Martin’s delusional belief that his daughter was alive and well and would somehow return to him.

Di Luna had never been able to shake the feeling that his father had never really seen him as his own separate person, that was for sure. He didn’t know how V— would have looked but apparently by the time he was about two years old he looked absolutely nothing like her and he could never shake the feeling that maybe that was why his father had never approved of him. He knew logically that this was stupid, but there was also nothing logical about what had happened to his father, and it wasn’t something that he felt comfortable talking to Leonora about, so his feelings of being insufficient by comparison to a dead (or missing, but he believed that she was dead) two-year-old girl were just feelings that were going to have to go without being addressed for the rest of his life. It certainly wasn’t something that Ferrando would have been open to talking about, not that either his feelings or the feelings of other people were something that Ferrando was particularly interested in talking about either.

Di Luna didn’t know whether that was because Ferrando was so intrinsically damaged by what he had seen when he had been dispatched to try to find V— after she had disappeared or if it was something else but he had never been able to shake the feeling that even if Ferrando seemed to be getting along perfectly well there was something very dark just below the surface. Di Luna didn’t think that tolerating it was the right way to refer to how he treated it but he accepted that if Ferrando was to be somebody that he spent a lot of time with then he would have to become accustomed to it. And, to be fair, he was accustomed to it — he had grown up with Ferrando, after all, so they spent most of their time together and in any case he didn’t remember what Ferrando had been like before V— had died, or disappeared, or whatever happened.

In any case, as long as Ferrando at least tolerated and accepted Di Luna then Di Luna would do his best to help Ferrando in return. And since it seemed to be what he needed, that mostly meant leaving Ferrando in charge of military operations.

* * * * *

Di Luna was easily the most interesting person Ferrando had ever met, and he wasn’t just saying that because he wanted him.

For one thing, since the count was married and had been since the Aragonese nobility had accepted that he really was male (or, more likely, conceded to his constant protestations and bringing a man with a large sword to their council meetings — Ferrando was quite proud of that), Ferrando was quite sure that he stood no chance with him. Also there was the fact that Di Luna was just over eleven years younger than him, and the grandson of his now-deceased mistress (and the son of his former master, but the less said about that particular relationship the better. He didn’t like to think about the last few months of Martin the Younger’s life, and any consideration of his life would just lead Ferrando down a particularly dark path). Even though the disparity in their ranks brought them more or less in line with each other when he factored in his own age, Ferrando couldn’t help but think that he and the Count probably wouldn’t be a fairy-tale romance any time soon.

That wasn’t to say that he didn’t let himself fantasise about the idea from time to time, of course. Di Luna ran on a very odd schedule and tended to only realise that he needed something from Ferrando late at night so when he would suddenly appear in Ferrando’s room in the army barracks… well, it was difficult not to let his mind briefly wander and imagine that Di Luna was going to tell him he was in love with him. As it was, though, this had yet to happen and Di Luna had usually just realised something that was completely unimportant, or needed to know something right now, regardless of how menial it was, and Ferrando was the only person who was appropriate to answer his question.

He was a strange man.

He was still exceptionally good looking, though. Ferrando wasn’t afraid to admit that, not least because a lot of the Aragonese noble ladies thought so as well, even those that knew he had transitioned to male. There had been some jealousy when he had refused to take any lovers — although Ferrando sometimes thought that might have been more because he didn’t realise that that was what was being suggested by the women who threw themselves at him — and, well, it hadn’t just been from the women. It wasn’t as though noblemen never had, well, needs that could only be met by other men, and it also wasn’t as though Ferrando was above providing for the right man.

Suffice to say, however, that he hadn’t had cause to do so since the previous Count had died.

Well, maybe it was that Di Luna also looked a lot like his father had when he was that age. Right down to the prematurely grey hair, actually — that had surprised Ferrando, but he supposed there was precedent for the men of the family going grey very early. (But it had been because of stress for his father. Very strange, really, since Di Luna had very little to be stressed about, or at least very little that Ferrando knew of. God knew what was going on with him and Leonora, because he didn’t want to know what their relationship was like.) Yes, he was strange and he had a bit of a blank look to his face sometimes, but Ferrando still found him very appealing.

At first he had just put it down to the fact that it had been a very long time since Ferrando had wanted to be with any man — after Martin the Younger had died he had had a brief phase of sleeping with any man who would have him but he had stopped bothering with that when he had started to recover somewhat — and the fact that Di Luna so resembled his father had affected him in some way. But it had been a few years now since he had first realised how he was feeling about Di Luna and he still wanted him, so he had to conclude that he was just attracted to him. Once again, this would have been fine if Di Luna wasn’t married, and if he knew if he was even interested in men, which he doubted.

Of course, he could see that his marriage to Leonora was unhappy, but he wasn’t so presumptuous as to think that was because she was the wrong gender and he would rather have been with another man (not that it wasn’t an interesting possibility to entertain). He knew that nobles often had unhappy marriages more intended to foster good relations between two different kingdoms of families than because two people were in love. And he had never married, so Ferrando certainly couldn’t comment on what marriage might have been like — his parents had been married for decades and were perfectly happy but they weren’t nobles, so it wasn’t something that Ferrando had any sort of angle on.

Mostly, Ferrando’s time was taken up with the knowledge that there was probably going to be a civil war some day soon, and that Di Luna was probably going to try to throw his hat into the ring as a contender for the throne of Aragon. He certainly didn’t want to deal with that — Di Luna was insufferable enough as it was when it was just Sicily that he had decided that he should have, let alone if he decided that he should be the King of both Aragon and of Sicily — but he also didn’t want to deal with the idea of having to go to war for some random nobleman who Di Luna picked because he seemed to be a better bet. He didn’t want to die or be killed under the banner of somebody that he had no particular allegiance to, even if Di Luna had decided that he did in fact have a deep connection with whichever nobleman he selected.

Di Luna was certainly inclined to do strange things in a way that his father had never been. Ferrando just found him confusing at the best of times, even though he liked him. Clearly he liked him, or he wouldn’t have spent half of his life rifling through an increasingly specific collection of fantasies involving him and increasingly creative things to do with ropes and various weapons. (He would never act on any of these, even if he and Di Luna did become lovers. It just didn’t appeal to him in the real world, even though sometimes the thought of tying Di Luna up was appealing on a non-sexual level, mostly when he thought he had a very intelligent idea but was really just behaving like an idiot.)

Ferrando certainly couldn’t imagine that, had he been in the position that Di Luna was in, he would have married Leonora. He knew that Di Luna had at one point believed that he was in love with Leonora but he certainly wasn’t in love with her any more — or Ferrando certainly didn’t think that he was, because he had seen people who were in love and they certainly didn’t act like Di Luna did with Leonora. Maybe it was just a symptom of how Ferrando was feeling about Di Luna that was making him think that, though — the people he had known who were in love were not nobles and were pretty much limited to his parents and immediate family members. Nobles must have been different — and if they were that different from ordinary people then Ferrando couldn’t imagine that he would have wanted to be a nobleman. At least he was hypothetically capable of being in a happy relationship, even though he couldn’t marry a person of the gender he was interested in.

It certainly wasn’t as though love was limited only to people who were married, or, apparently, to a man and a woman. Ferrando had known plenty of people who had had affairs, nobles and otherwise, with people who they were far more interested in than their actual spouses. Hell, he had even been the person who had been the “other” party in the affair, although that had been inevitable since Martin the Younger hadn’t been interested in women either. He and his wife had had an arrangement which had seemed to work since they had produced two children, even though… well, he tried not to think about V—. Di Luna, at least, seemed to be doing fairly well in spite of his circumstances.

Also, the circumstances there had been unusual, since Di Luna’s mother hadn’t been attracted to men, either. It had really been a perfect marriage: they had both had lovers of the same gender as them and had had two children with relative ease. Di Luna’s mother was still alive, although Ferrando heard and saw very little of her as she didn’t live in Aljafería because it reminded her too much of V—. He couldn’t blame her; most things here reminded him very strongly of V— too, and he sometimes found it hard to bear without having been her parent. He certainly wouldn’t have wanted to live where his child had died, if he had had children.

Of course, Ferrando didn’t want children. That was pretty much inevitable considering what he had seen in the past, but also the idea had never really appealed to him — he supposed that it was a good thing that he was only attracted to men, because he wouldn’t have been able to accidentally have a child with his partner. Even if that partner was Di Luna then he wouldn’t have been able to accidentally get him pregnant because he had had a hysterectomy a few years ago, and that had been a nightmare for Ferrando to babysit him during. He had dealt very poorly with the fact that he was incapacitated and had tried to start doing too much too quickly and had ended up reopening his stitches multiple times. Ferrando had joked then about tying him up so that he couldn’t do it for a third time after the second, but Di Luna had been too delirious with pain to give a coherent answer.

Ferrando hadn’t expected that Di Luna would have remembered much of it after he recovered from his surgery, but he was still glad that he had because it had brought them closer. Di Luna was certainly far happier now that he had had a hysterectomy — and now that he had recovered from it, which had been a bigger issue than the surgery itself — and Ferrando too was happier now that Di Luna was having a better time in his own body, and therefore in his own mind. Ferrando was just happy that Di Luna was easier to be around now that he had had surgery. Di Luna had also mentioned the fact that he wanted to have surgery on his chest because that was something else that he felt awful about, but Ferrando just thought that sounded extremely worrying and painful for him, and that Di Luna wouldn’t cope well with having to be incapacitated for a while after it. Also, if there was a civil war then being weaker would only put Di Luna in danger, which Ferrando didn’t want to happen to him.

In all honesty, there were a lot of things that Di Luna did that just didn’t make sense to Ferrando, but he supposed that he had to just tolerate it because it was part of who Di Luna was as a person and he was in love with him. Well, it probably wasn’t as though he was ever going to have a relationship with him, but he could at least dream of it. (And he did. Regularly.)

He certainly didn’t have much of a taste for tournaments, which was what it had been decided was the best way to make the various warring Aragonese factions make peace temporarily, but then again neither did Di Luna. They were both planning to find somewhere quiet where they could both be away from the loud noise of the tournament, and to let Leonora crown the victor. That was another thing that people loved, apparently, not that it was something that Ferrando particularly saw the appeal of, but that was probably because he also wasn’t attracted to women.

In all honesty, Ferrando couldn’t stand the idea of tournaments. He understood why knights might participate in them, or even nobles like Di Luna, since it showed off their martial ability without causing actual damage (if they were careful — Ferrando had seen some unpleasant things happen with a lance before but the less said about that the better), but it just seemed ghoulish to Ferrando. He, unlike many nobles who pretended to understand it, had actually experienced war and its horrors and he didn’t see why he should have to pretend to enjoy it just because it was a lance or nobody was dying. He didn’t like the idea of having to pantomime something that had killed countless men.

Of course, he would never tell Di Luna that.

For one thing, Di Luna didn’t really need to hear about his trauma — nobody did, to be honest; Ferrando himself usually didn’t let himself hear about his own trauma even though he was the person who was occupying his own mind — he had enough problems of his own without having to hear about Ferrando’s problems too, even if he did sometimes try to persuade Ferrando to talk about them. For another thing, he didn’t really want to think about the less savory implications of tournaments and he didn’t really want to spoil Di Luna’s day. He would just say that the noise was the issue, because the noise probably would be an issue too — Ferrando couldn’t stand loud noise, which probably meant that being a soldier was an odd choice for him but there you had it.

Also, in all honesty, confessing his feelings about anything just left an unpleasant taste in Ferrando’s mouth. If he could never talk about how he felt with anybody then he would be happy not to, even though he knew logically that that was a terrible idea and that he needed to talk about his feelings at least at some point. But if it was something as insignificant as a tournament that he was going to be Di Luna’s guest at, well, what was the point, really? Di Luna wasn’t a fan either so it would just seem petty to complain about it. At least it would give him some time away from work so he could just try to enjoy some time off for once, which was the main thing that he hoped for when he took time off. If that had to be at a tournament then that was fine. Or he would have to convince himself that it was fine.

He would happily have done a lot of things for Di Luna, even if they weren’t in his best interest and if they would make him unhappy. He certainly wasn’t a stranger to doing this, either for Di Luna or for his father, even though he was sure that there was no way it was healthy for him, either physically or mentally. He didn’t mind if he had to sacrifice a couple of hours of comfort so that they could spend time at a tournament which was meant to try to prevent a civil war, even though Ferrando didn’t really understand how people charging at each other with lances was a peacemaking event. He didn’t really understand other people, though, so that was probably at least tolerable. He and Di Luna could probably commiserate, at least, since he wasn’t sure that Di Luna was too keen on all the ceremonial parts of being the Count either. (Ferrando knew he would have preferred not to be the count in any case, but that wasn’t really something that either he or Ferrando was in a position to do anything about.)

That was another convenient part of being in Di Luna’s service for Ferrando. Di Luna was a rare nobleman who, most of the time at least, seemed to know his own limits. He knew that he was perfectly good at swinging a sword around in a field but he wasn’t as good at the logistical side of things, even though that was probably what he should have been doing considering that he was a nobleman. And, because he didn’t have children, there was no way that his County would continue to be in the family. It would probably end up being absorbed into Ferdinand of Aragon’s tithes if Di Luna died, especially since they were related. And Ferrando was often concerned that Di Luna might have died, which would have been a shame on several levels. For one thing, Ferrando would probably have had to find a new job: the fact that he was close to Di Luna and this was known about both of them, and the fact that he had been attached to Di Luna’s grandmother’s household when she had raised him and had never been keen on Ferdinand, would mean that his rank would have been in real danger.

Well, it wasn’t as though Ferrando wasn’t a good soldier.

It was just that Martin the Younger had apparently decided that the best thing to do with him, after what had happened with V—, even though it was a long time ago now, was to reassign him permanently to be behind a desk. Ferrando supposed that he understood it — he wouldn’t want somebody who had done what he had done to be in charge of anything on the battlefield — but it still felt like an insult. Generally an officer didn’t expect to be much younger than about fifty before being promoted out of trouble, and it was usually because the officer in question was completely out of touch with reality, which Ferrando very much hoped that he wasn’t. But generally, this sort of promotion meant that the officer in question was no longer putting the men in danger, while also not being fired and risking an argument.

Ferrando certainly hoped, especially because he had found V—’s body, or what Martin the Younger had immediately assumed was V—’s body, so many years after the fact, when Di Luna had been about twelve, that this hadn’t been the reason that he had been promoted. But it was so difficult to assume anything else, especially with the hit his mental health had taken as a result of what had happened. He wasn’t even sure that Di Luna hadn’t just kept him in his present rank because he didn’t trust him either — even though he had never known V—, they had been siblings, and Ferrando knew that he wanted to have been able to grow up with her, but it wasn’t as though there was anything that Ferrando could possibly have done about that.

Di Luna never struck him as particularly passive-aggressive, either. Ordinarily Ferrando would have joked that he lacked the intellect to be passive-aggressive but he really wasn’t stupid; he was capable of being very intelligent if somebody wanted to take the time to try to understand what he was saying. Ferrando was one of very few people who wanted to do this — he and Di Luna didn’t exactly operate in exactly the same way, but they understood each other and cared for each other. He certainly didn’t assume that Di Luna was an idiot as some people did, but maybe that was more because he was more inclined to listen to him than most people. (That was partly a symptom of the fact that he was attracted to him, of course. But that wasn’t the whole issue, because he had certainly been attracted to some idiots in his life — maybe there was just something that he saw in Di Luna that other people couldn’t or maybe he was being too idealistic but he truly cared about him and wanted good things for him… possibly that was including himself, but still.)

There were a lot of strange things about when he had found V—’s body, even though he usually tried to repress the memory. He knew that it wasn’t healthy to do so, but, well, there wasn’t really that much else that he could do. He didn’t even try to think too hard about the fact that she would, if she was still alive, have been nearly thirty years old now because that would just start him entertaining the idea of thinking about what she might be doing now, and that was just too much for him to contemplate. It was just unpleasant and while his job sometimes involved doing unpleasant things he wasn’t keen on thinking about them outside of work. And this was very much outside of work.

The main thing that he remembered was that there was a woman who was probably about the age that he was now when he had found V—’s body, but who would probably be about fifty years old now, hanging around just outside of where he found the skeleton. It was almost as if she had been waiting for him to find her but surely that couldn’t have been it, because how could she possibly have known that somebody was looking? He almost hadn’t thought to bring it up to Martin the Younger when he had returned — after all, how could he have, after what he had just experienced? — but he had mentioned it eventually very late that night. When Martin had pressed him for details it had become clear that he had found the woman who had taken V— from her cradle when her mother had been burned — the only conclusion that the two men had been able to reach was that she had burned V— on the same pyre as her mother had died on but it had taken them this long to find the body.

But that didn’t seem like it was the whole story, somehow.

Ferrando was sure that it was just because he was being fanciful, hoping that he would somehow discover the missing child, but he was completely sure that there was something else wrong with the woman. She hadn’t seemed as though she was satisfied to have managed to lure one of Martin the Younger’s men to where the burned body of his child lay, for one thing, and if she was trying to get revenge for her mother why wouldn’t she have seemed pleased with herself? She had seemed miserable, really, in a way that Ferrando just couldn’t understand and that he wasn’t sure that he wanted to be able to understand.

He had certainly never mentioned this to Di Luna, who, despite being physically rather strong, was mentally quite fragile in a way that bled over into his physical appearance. He didn’t want to traumatise him further, because he had always thought that there was something odd about how Di Luna talked about V—, as though he resented the fact that she had died and therefore wouldn’t have to deal with all the expectations of being a noble. Maybe it was just that, if she hadn’t died, he wouldn’t also have had the burden of having to know that his father desperately wanted him to find this missing child that he had never given up on the continued life of despite the increasingly low odds. It wasn’t something that he and Ferrando had ever talked about, though, so he could only speculate. Maybe Di Luna would just rather have been doing something else — it seemed as though he found being a soldier and running around with a sword far more useful as a use of his time than he found his actual responsibilities, not that Ferrando could entirely blame him.

He would have preferred to be a normal soldier too.


	2. Chapter 2

Ferrando had warned Di Luna that tournaments were unpleasant, and while Di Luna was inclined to agree he was very happy that he had Ferrando’s company. He hadn’t even thought that Ferrando would want to come along if he was given the option — he would usually protest unless he was all but dragged out but he had come along more or less willingly today. Di Luna supposed it was because Ferrando was even less keen than he was (and than his cousin was) for a civil war to start and that if this was how it was going to be prevented (or how the nobles were going to try to stop it from happening), then he was willing to work with it.

Also, well, Di Luna could imagine that Ferrando appreciated the fact that he had somebody he could complain with about what was happening here. That was really the only reason he spent time with Di Luna (or that was what Di Luna would joke about — he knew that Ferrando liked him really). They had a lot in common, but one of the most noticeable areas of common ground that the two men had was that they both hated the same things.

It wasn’t as though Di Luna hadn’t had a little fun with it, either — Di Luna had said that, since Ferrando was to be his guest and not there guarding him, then he should look it, so (with some concessions to how Ferrando actually liked to dress when he wasn’t in uniform), he had insisted that he buy some new clothes for Ferrando, so that he didn’t stick out too much. And, even though Ferrando didn’t always look entirely comfortable with it — and he certainly wasn’t bothering to pretend that he was actually a noble, or that he was enjoying his day — well… it was giving Di Luna much to think about.

At least most noblemen had affairs — he didn’t feel too bad about looking at Ferrando and his mind immediately dragging him (and Ferrando with him) into the nearest tent and undressing him. Hell, he had been the result of an affair (so had V—, although she had been the result of an affair with a different woman — there had been several, but he and V— had been the only children for some reason), from what he knew, although from what he knew his father also wasn’t too interested in women generally. Neither was his wife, which might have been where the issue came from in the first place.

Well, even if Ferrando didn’t look like he liked wearing something that wasn’t his military uniform — maybe it was some sort of impostor syndrome, or just the fact that he didn’t really want to be there and that was bleeding over into his general attitude where his clothes were concerned — Di Luna liked the fact that he was wearing it. Of course, he wasn’t going to say as much, because he didn’t think Ferrando felt the same way about him, but he very much enjoyed the image. And the opportunity to spend time “with” Leonora without actually interacting too much with her.

It wasn’t so much that he disliked her as it was that he felt completely disconnected from her in a ridiculous way — he would always rather be with Ferrando (not necessarily with other men, just Ferrando, really) than with her but she was clearly having a way better time than he was here. He wouldn’t begrudge her that — she was a far friendlier and more sociable person than he was, and that was just how they both were — but he didn’t want to be dragged around with her pretending to like random knights or noblemen, some of whom he probably actively disliked. He would probably have brought the mood down, for one thing, but also he wanted to be with Ferrando more than he wanted to spend time with Leonora.

“You know…” Di Luna sighed and looked at Ferrando. “I don’t actually dislike Leonora.” It wasn’t really fair that he was so much smaller than Ferrando, because it meant that he got far drunker far quicker than Ferrando. He was about tall enough that he reached Ferrando’s collarbones, and a lot narrower across than Ferrando even though he was hardly weak. He could run around wearing armor all day, for one thing, which was also something that Ferrando could do.

“…Good.” Ferrando had drunk more than him, actually, but he was at worst a little tipsy. Di Luna, on the other had, was probably going to have a horrible headache the next morning even though he had drunk about half as much as Ferrando had (and he was probably going to stop drinking now. Ferrando probably wasn’t going to for at least a few more hours, and he would probably still be mostly fine when they headed home). “You’re married to her, I hoped you wouldn’t.”

Ferrando had finished his most recent drink now, and he now seemed to be chewing on the rim of the horn cup. Di Luna didn’t find anything particularly remarkable about this; Ferrando did a lot of odd things so chewing on a cup wasn’t too far out of the ordinary. But it did draw Di Luna’s eye to his definitely unusually sharp canines, and which lead Di Luna’s mind down a distinctly risky path. (Or at least one that would be risky if they were properly in public. They had found somewhere out of the way, and more importantly out of the sun, to sit, so they were almost in private.) This was certainly a situation where having transitioned was an advantage, not that there were a lot of these sorts of situation. He was just pleased about the ones that did arise — he had to have some sort of good come of it.

Wearing a chest binder in this heat, on the other hand, was certainly not one of the situations where having transitioned was a good thing. He was wearing several layers as it was and having the extra, and rather thick, layer of a chest binder wrapped very tightly around his upper body was doing very little for his mood — but at least he had Ferrando for company.

“Not like…” Di Luna made a face, unsure of how to explain this because he didn’t really understand it himself. “Or. Well. It isn’t that I don’t think I could be attracted to her.”

“It’s a political marriage,” Ferrando pointed out, although the fact that he still had the rim of the cup in his mouth made his voice sound muffled. “You don’t have to like her, you just have to…” He gestured. “You have to put up with her more than you have to actually love her.”

“I did think I was in love with her,” Di Luna said. Ferrando seemed to understand that this was his opportunity to be quiet, because Di Luna was thinking something now and he wouldn’t be interrupted. Ferrando was receptive to this, fortunately. Probably because it was one of Di Luna’s less wearing habits, more than because he actually liked him, but it was pleasant to consider. “Because I had to give the impression of pursuing her, so…”

“So you believed what you were saying?”

“More or less,” Di Luna said, even though that didn’t sound completely right. Maybe it had just been the attention that he enjoyed — he just hadn’t thought that much about it because he wasn’t sure how to. “And I like being her friend even if I don’t…” He frowned. “If I’m not attracted to her.”

Ferrando laughed, clearly having picked up on what he had nearly said. “Well, if you can live with each other…” He shrugged. “That is probably all you can hope for when you’re both nobles.” Di Luna expected him to look smug but he didn’t — and Di Luna had no idea what that meant.

He knew that Ferrando could be smug. He also knew that Ferrando didn’t like to be completely sincere. Finally, Di Luna knew that he himself didn’t really like having to think about how he felt, because he didn’t really know what words to use to explain his feelings, especially not his feelings for Ferrando. What he knew was that he cared deeply about Ferrando, and that he wanted to have some sort of assurance that Ferrando also cared about him. This almost felt like confirmation that Ferrando did care about him — his slightly wistful tone certainly suggested it, at least — and Di Luna was absolutely desperate for approval even from ordinary people.

Ferrando was certainly far from just any normal person: quite aside from the intensity with which Di Luna wanted him he was one of the only people who seemed to see Di Luna as being human, rather than whatever other people seemed to see him as. To other noblemen, he was a strange little oddity: they didn’t understand what he was or who he was, but Di Luna didn’t think they wanted to understand him because if they tried to understand him they might have discovered something uncomfortable about themselves that they had been trying to repress, or they might just have had to acknowledge his humanity. To the men he probably wasn’t seen as entirely a person but somebody to be avoided for risk of angering him — as a nobleman he could end their careers with a word, and their lives too. Even if he didn’t want to do that, because he wasn’t stupid and he knew that angering the people around him was no way to conduct himself, he didn’t really want the men to know that.

Maybe it was a bad thing that he trusted Ferrando as much as he did, since Ferrando wasn’t a noble. Di Luna had considered raising him to noble rank, or to something similar to noble rank, but Ferrando wouldn’t have wanted that. He liked to keep to himself and part of that involved not having his life interfered with, which Di Luna would never have dared to do, so they had a rather unbalanced friendship, but no less a good one. Di Luna trusted Ferrando to tell him what he needed to hear rather than what he wanted to hear, and in return Di Luna was allowed to do things which might have annoyed Ferrando. This — bringing Ferrando to a tournament that he clearly didn’t want to attend because he wanted his company rather than to be forced to spend time with his wife — was just one example, but he hoped that it wouldn’t also be the last example.  
“Why ruin a relationship that works perfectly well by bringing love into it.” Ferrando shrugged. “If you and Leonora get on well with… well, whatever it is you do, I’m not married so I wouldn’t know, why bother trying to make yourself be in love with her.” That didn’t sound like something Di Luna could force himself to do in any case, but then again he hadn’t tried yet. He mostly spent his time trying to persuade himself that he wasn’t in love with Ferrando, although now that he had come to terms with it there was a massive gap in his mental landscape. “I mean, you probably shouldn’t do what your father did,” he added hastily.

“What, have children with women other than my wife?” Di Luna laughed. “Because I think you’re overestimating my abilities.”

Ferrando laughed. “I more meant go behind her back and do things that make her unhappy.” Di Luna tipped his head to the side: he had always got the impression that his father’s wife hadn’t minded the fact that his surviving children had been with other women, but maybe not. “The other women weren’t a problem, but the children were.” That confirmed it, but Di Luna wasn’t too upset about it. He was more curious about what Ferrando knew, actually. “I mean, don’t do things that will upset her, because you need her to be on your side if it comes to it.”

Di Luna laughed, but more because his mind was starting to wander now than because Ferrando was actually funny (not that he didn’t find Ferrando funny, of course — this just hadn’t actually been a joke and hadn’t been hugely funny), and he didn’t want Ferrando to know quite how far away he was. He would have preferred if they could just not talk at all about his relationship with his wife, because it wasn’t a great relationship, but that seemed to be the direction that Ferrando had taken their conversation in. He would just have to put up with it and figure out a way in which he could turn it around on Ferrando (although he knew that that would annoy him too).

“Do you think you’re going to watch any of the…” Ferrando made a face and gestured towards where the tournament was actually being held. “Events?” he asked. Di Luna could hear something in his tone but he couldn’t quite identify what it was and he didn’t want to come across as being presumptuous in the absence of knowing what was actually being said (or what was being implied). “I imagine you’ll be wanted there,” Ferrando said.

That was probably true. The fact that Di Luna wasn’t participating probably struck at least a few of the noblemen as a little odd, not that it was any of their business, so if he just lurked back here with a soldier that would probably have seemed very suspicious. Leonora was dealing with everything that would require actually communicating with people and her maid was with her, so nothing untoward was likely to happen (not that Leonora seemed particularly inclined to having affairs), but it would look strange if Di Luna wasn’t present.

“Are you going to?” he asked, finally, because he was truly unsure what he was meant to say in response.

“Do you want me to go with you?” Ferrando smiled. He had stopped chewing the rim of the cup now, and Di Luna began wishing that he would go back to it because at least that distracted him from what he wanted to go and do with Ferrando. “Because I won’t if you don’t specifically ask me,” he teased, in a tone that made Di Luna go slightly red. If Ferrando noticed, though, he didn’t say anything — although Di Luna did notice the way Ferrando looked him up and down, which seemed to suggest that he had seen something.

Well, at least he probably wouldn’t say anything, if he even had noticed anything.

But it affected Di Luna so much that he only noticed after Ferrando had spoken that the decision on whether he was going to be going to see the tournament had been made for him by Ferrando. He couldn’t object — not really — and he probably wouldn’t have minded Ferrando telling him what to do a little more. (That said, it seemed to him as though Ferrando also liked being told what to do. They could figure that out, though.) And, well, it would probably seem strange — and a little rude, probably — if he just sat around back here with Ferrando and let his wife do all the work.

“And if I told you that you were going with me?” Di Luna asked. He was pushing his luck a little bit here, but based on his expression Ferrando didn’t seem to mind — in fact, had he been being especially presumptuous he would have assumed that Ferrando almost liked it. “I would say you wouldn’t disobey an order, but, well…”

“I’m usually the one giving the orders, yes,” Ferrando said. That wasn’t quite it, but Di Luna decided against mentioning Ferrando’s enjoyment of insubordination. “Well, since you told me so politely I suppose we ought to.” He looked up at the sky to gauge the time, shielding his eyes from the bright sun, and then looked back at Di Luna. “But I think we’ve an hour or so before anything starts happening, and…” He laughed. “I know how time around here tends to work.”

“What, you think they’ll start late?” Di Luna laughed. He took another swig of his drink to avoid thinking about how the sound of Ferrando laughing had affected him. “I’m sure Leonora will be furious,” he said hastily, as he found that he had accidentally finished his drink. Well, that could make the rest of the day more than just a little bit interesting, but it wouldn’t be a problem, he hoped. It wasn’t as though he couldn’t handle his liquor.

In his youth he would probably have enjoyed the tournaments — when he had been younger he had felt that he constantly had to prove his masculinity, and how better to do that than by attending tournament after tournament? There wasn’t anything much more masculine than what went on during jousting and sparring (which often puzzled him — so many men hated the idea of sexual intimacy with other men but sparring and trusting their opponents not to kill them seemed almost as intimate as that and they all enjoyed it. Of course, he wouldn’t ask Ferrando about it, because that would have been very awkward, but it was worth thinking about), and if he wanted to seem masculine he would have been able to learn from it.

As an adult the main appeal was the fact that there were a lot of men around, which was something that he was very fond of. Otherwise, he didn’t see much point to it — he had figured out that he didn’t have to be male in a certain way in order to “really” be a man, and if he was happy to write music or draw or read then why should he have to perform masculinity in an unnatural way for other people? It seemed to suit Ferrando a little better, but even he had seemed to be more interested in the opportunity for a little peacocking, and hadn’t been too interested in the actual fighting aspect as much as he had been in the sorts of fashion the men had been wearing.

Di Luna had tried very hard not to read too much into that, but it was difficult not to notice where Ferrando’s eyes were drawn. They were clearly interested in different parts of men’s bodies but it wasn’t as though Di Luna was much different from him. (Well, aside from in the particularly obvious ways, but, at the same time, there were ways that that could be used to Di Luna’s advantage.)

This, however, was probably not the place for this sort of thinking — for one thing, they were in public and even in the most liberal societies that Di Luna had been told existed public sex was controversial. On a slightly more serious, or perhaps depressing, note, though, it wasn’t as though he and Ferrando would ever actually get together so this sort of wishful thinking, enjoyable though it might have been in the right place and at the right time (late at night and very far away from anybody else), probably wasn’t doing anything good for Di Luna’s mental health. Especially since he was already married and, even if it was perfectly normal for nobles to take lovers as Ferrando seemed to have been hinting, he didn’t really want to. Leonora certainly wasn’t going to, or at least she wasn’t going to as far as he knew, so it would seem hypocritical and unfair for him to do so.

On the other hand, it wasn’t as though Di Luna knew a whole lot about Leonora’s life. It wasn’t quite that they didn’t like each other because that was stupid in an arranged marriage, rather than just making the best of the situation — and in any case the fact that she was unaffiliated with the court politics meant that she could be a good ally. Although that was only if they were able to get on well, which they didn’t always, no matter how hard they tried. (Although they generally did not try.) The fact that he didn’t know what she was getting up to for most of her life could have made him suspicious but really he was more curious — he certainly didn’t believe that she would have a lover, but maybe that was just wishful thinking, too. The fact that they weren’t having a good relationship made him feel insecure but if that was just the way that Leonora was, he would feel better about himself.

“You know,” Di Luna said. Ferrando looked at him in a way that suggested that, whatever he was about to be told, he did know. Maybe Di Luna was just a predictable drunk, because he looked at him like this frequently, but he didn’t mind anyway. He liked having this sort of relationship with Ferrando as much as he would have liked to have been in a sexual relationship with him. “I wasn’t actually supposed to be married to Leonora.”

“I did know that, actually,” Ferrando said. That probably made sense, but still. Di Luna still wanted to discuss it, just so that they would have something about which to talk, rather than just sitting around drinking — Di Luna didn’t like being drunk around other people, and Ferrando probably wasn’t too keen on Di Luna being drunk around other people, either. He could be frustrating about it.

“She was meant to be married to—”

“—To your cousin, I know,” Ferrando said. “You do remember I’m older than you, don’t you?” Di Luna just laughed. “And that your grandmother liked me.”  
That was quite a compliment, really — considering that his grandmother had been a noblewoman the fact that she had trusted a menial and a soldier enough to talk to him about who her beloved grandchildren were going to marry when they grew up was certainly something. But Di Luna assumed that that was similar to the idea that two spouses from different courts would get on well because one half of the couple would have had nothing to do with the local court politics. Ferrando had little to do with it too and could therefore be a reasonable sounding board for ideas with no ulterior motives.

“Then he died,” Di Luna continued, pretending that he hadn’t heard what Ferrando said. Ferrando continued chewing on the rim of his cup and nodded, and suddenly Di Luna was thoroughly distracted by him again. “But she was… she was already living at the court.” He shook his head aggressively to try to get rid of a particularly explicit thought, but if Ferrando even noticed that anything was out of the ordinary about his behaviour — and he probably wouldn’t; Di Luna knew that he wasn’t particularly observant at the best of times and he clearly wasn’t enjoying his time here at the tournament — he didn’t let on to it.

But Di Luna almost found himself wishing that Ferrando had commented on his odd behaviour, just for once, even though he was usually too polite to talk about it, because that might have given him an opportunity (or maybe an excuse) to discuss his feelings. But, well, maybe that wouldn’t have been a good thing — he had to keep reminding himself that he didn’t actually know that Ferrando was attracted to men, even though Di Luna sometimes saw him staring at other men in a way that certainly made him think that he noticed him in the same way as he did — if he accidentally let Ferrando know that he was attracted to him without knowing that Ferrando not only was not inclined that way but that he was offended or felt threatened by the idea… well, that was a worrying prospect. No, he would just have to stick to imagining the pleasant things that Ferrando might have wanted to do to him — but that was also completely fine.

Anyway.

“So, when my cousin died she just didn’t go back home — it wouldn’t have—”

“—Been safe.” Ferrando nodded, and took Di Luna’s cup off him. That was probably fair — when he was drunk Di Luna tended to start talking with his hands even more than he usually did, and his cup was still half full, so that could have been disastrous, especially with clothes that couldn’t have been laundered. “I know, I was there.”

Had this been anybody else, Di Luna would have assumed that Ferrando was fed up of what he was talking about but he knew him well enough to know that that wasn’t what was going on here — Ferrando wasn’t too keen on reciprocal conversation but he also knew that people wanted the people they were talking to to at least give them some indication that they were listening. Di Luna didn’t really mind either way — once he had started talking about something that interested him he couldn’t have been stopped — but he appreciated that Ferrando was making this much (or any) effort with him. Even Leonora, who had known him since childhood, didn’t really bother to try to listen to what he was saying half of the time — maybe that was half of why he liked Ferrando so much. Because he actually seemed to want to talk, and listen, to Di Luna.

“And then when you…” Ferrando gestured, not knowing the words that Di Luna wanted him to use and not wanting to offend. Di Luna was glad of it — he would have preferred to be asked rather than have somebody assume and get it offensively wrong. He and Ferrando had never actually talked about it either, which was certainly a strange feeling, but Di Luna wasn’t great at talking about his feelings and Ferrando wasn’t either.

“Transitioned?” It didn’t feel quite right but it was better than the other options.

“Right, right.” Ferrando seemed to agree that it wasn’t the right word — but he didn’t say anything either. Di Luna supposed that was fair — it wasn’t really his business. “Well. After that happened the other nobles decided that you needed to be married, for… whatever reason.” Di Luna laughed: he had never really understood that either. “And there was a young lady around your age living at the court, so…”

“So we ended up married, whether we liked it or not,” Di Luna said, shrugging.

“Not interested in women?” Ferrando asked, but then immediately looked as though he regretted it.

Coming from anybody else, that question would have annoyed Di Luna, but it was more about his tone than the actual words. Usually it just ended up sounding like a patronising way of suggesting that Di Luna wasn’t really a man but Ferrando just sounded as though he was making conversation, or that… Well, that was probably the wishful thinking again, but Di Luna couldn’t help but think that this sort of wishful thinking was completely justified. In any case, it took him a couple of seconds to formulate a reply that wasn’t just a squeaking noise.

“Well, it isn’t as though I’ve ever been with anybody else,” Di Luna said, shrugging. “So I suppose I don’t know.” He suddenly couldn’t quite force himself to look Ferrando in the eye. “Maybe it’s just her, I’m not sure.”

“Oh?”

“Well, I know she isn’t attracted to me, but…”

“But they never are?” Ferrando suggested. “I mean, why do you think your father had so many other women, when he was married?”

“I thought that was because I had two half-brothers who died before they reached a year old,” Di Luna said.

“Well, I think that entered into it,” Ferrando said, in a tone that suggested that he knew more about this than he was letting on — and possibly more about it that even Di Luna knew. “But mostly…” He shrugged. “Well, I remember he spent as much time as possible away from his wife.”

“He was at war a lot, though,” Di Luna said. “That was how you met him, I thought.”

“Well, yes, but even when we were home he wouldn’t want anything to do with her. He was always with the other men, or if not he was with his other women, but I don’t think he was ever…” He frowned. “I can’t really explain it but he never seemed like he wanted the other women in the way that people who are actually in… well, lust, I suppose, more than they were in love, do.”

“Hmm.” Well, that certainly explained Di Luna’s own mind, if that was something that could be passed on from father to son. Even though Ferrando had said absolutely nothing about whether his father had actually been attracted to men, he couldn’t help but think that, in combination with the fact that he had said that he spent much of his time with the other men, his apparent lack of interest in even women that he sought out to have affairs was more than just a little suspicious.  
It was interesting that he thought there was a difference between lust and love, though — maybe that was something that Di Luna would have to ask him about some day. But for now, of course, the tournament was about to begin. It wasn’t as though Di Luna could have missed the fact, what with all the sudden trumpeting right behind him that made Ferrando jump and then cringe into the table that they were sat at, but Leonora also poked her head around and, when she saw the two of them, ran over with her companion Ines beside her.

“You two aren’t just going to sulk back here all afternoon, are you?” she asked. Ferrando looked slightly surprised that she had even bothered to acknowledge him — most nobles didn’t really care to notice his presence — but didn’t actually say anything. “The point is that you’re seen here; you might as well just have stayed home.”

“I really think we should have,” Di Luna sighed. “It wasn’t my idea that we come.”

He didn’t like the bright sunlight — there was a reason that he spent most of his time out at night, after all, and most of it was that the sunlight hurt his eyes. He was particularly sensitive to any overwhelming sensory experience, but bright light was a strong least favourite for him — and the noise wasn’t much better. And he could tell that Ferrando didn’t much care for the experience, and spending time with him was far more interesting than spending time here with Leonora and her companion that he didn’t much care for. For all Di Luna knew Ines was a perfectly nice person — but he also didn’t really like the way she looked at him.

To be honest he could have lived without anybody other than Ferrando acknowledging him much of the time — at least Ferrando was capable of being a nice person, even if he didn’t always use that ability — but the way that she stared at him every time she saw him with Leonora felt just barely one step below drunk nobles who knew his history demanding to know how sex with Leonora worked. (He had a stock answer to that one, at least: “Much better than between you and your wife, I hear.” It certainly did wonders to stop any conversation. There wasn’t much he could say in response to being stared mockingly at by his wife’s apparent closest friend, on the other hand.)

“It wasn’t my idea either,” Leonora said, but she still seemed to be almost annoyingly in her element. “Your cousin wanted you here but he knows you don’t listen to him.” Even Ferrando snorted with laughter at that. Di Luna shot him a look to tell him to shut up, but he obviously didn’t pay any attention. “So, knowing that you do listen to me…” She shrugged and dragged him up by his hand, which he didn’t much care for but which he would have to tolerate, since they were married.

“So you might as well have some fun,” Ines said. Ferrando avoided her, Di Luna noticed, but maybe that was just because he didn’t much care for physical contact. “Although… I’m not sure about all the…” She gestured as though attacking somebody with a sword. Ferrando dodged out of her way before she could punch him in the stomach accidentally.

“Only somebody who’s never done any sword-fighting would say that,” Ferrando said, shrugging. Leonora let go of Di Luna, who waited for a second for Ferrando, who had fallen behind along with Ines, to catch up to him. That was certainly an interesting change of tune — but then again it made sense for Ferrando to be a little smug, he supposed, about somebody who wasn’t even close to being an expert trying to talk about something that he knew about.

“Suit yourself,” Ines said, over her shoulder. Di Luna saw that Leonora was laughing. “I prefer to have fun without… bleeding,” she said. “Not that that’s something I would expect a soldier to understand.” Di Luna put his hand on Ferrando’s chest to stop him from just going over and punching her in the face, which would have been at worst unseemly, considering how annoying - and rude, frankly — she was being, and gave her a reproachful look. He didn’t really want to say anything, though, because she was considerably taller than he was and could probably have slapped him in the face without any sort of recourse.

Ferdinand of Aragon, Di Luna’s cousin, was indeed waiting for him and Leonora — and Ines — when they joined him, but Ferrando apparently saw the fact that there were two extremely burly guards preventing just anybody from getting too near to the King as an opportunity to sneak away. By the time Di Luna noticed, he had already disappeared — he guessed that he had gone back to where they had been before, which was probably good because it would be an obvious place for them to meet again after the tournament.

“I thought your friend was keen on all…” Ines, sat down beside Leonora, waved a hand dismissively at the field. “All this.” That seemed to be a fair way to sum it up, at least.

“Well, you know how men are.” Ferdinand’s wife was a kind woman but Di Luna had never really been able to get used to being in her company — for one thing she had known him as a child and for another she didn’t much seem to like him. Ferdinand is just the same, you know,” she said. She leaned across Di Luna to give a golden laurel crown to Leonora. “For the champion,” she explained.

“Thank you.” Leonora turned it around admiringly in her hands.

“Fadrique, why aren’t you competing?” Her name was Eleanor, but with the amount of time Di Luna had spent around her and how little he knew her generally, it was probably reasonable that he had forgotten her name. He still felt bad that she remembered his name and he had only just remembered hers, though. “Or that your friend isn’t, for that thing. I didn’t get a good look at him, but he looked strong enough.”

Ferrando would probably like the fact that she had mistaken him for a noble, in the slightly sarcastic way that he liked anything that happened around him that related to nobles, but if he didn’t tell her then Ines would. And she would be far less polite about it, so it made sense for Di Luna to do it instead. “Well, he isn’t a noble,” Di Luna said. “Or a Knight.”

“Oh. Well then, I’m sure, you can work on that later,” Eleanor said. Di Luna looked at Ines for a second to confirm that she had just said that, and then looked back. “But that doesn’t mean he should be denied the fun of…” She made a face. “Well, it isn’t really my favourite activity. That’s why I’m having Leonora crown the victor.” Di Luna laughed. “Ferdinand?” She nudged her husband, but Di Luna could tell that he had been listening anyway.

“Oh, yes, I remember him — he was part of your grandmother’s household, wasn’t he?” Ah, of course. Di Luna’s grandmother had been instrumental in getting Ferdinand the throne of Aragon — it would make sense that he would want to make nice with former members of her household, even if they were just soldiers. “I seem to remember he found—”

“Ferdinand,” Eleanor chastised him sternly. “I certainly don’t want to be reminded of that, and I don’t think Fadrique does either.” Di Luna nodded slightly in thanks. “Send for him or don’t as you see fit, but for God’s sake, don’t bring up all that ghastly business with V—.”

Ferdinand complied, and gestured to one of the two guards to come over to his chair. They had a brief conversation that was too quiet for Di Luna to hear, especially over the noise that the crowd were making, and then the guard slipped out again. “Won’t he need to know where he is?” Di Luna asked incredulously.

“Oh, they’ll know,” Ferdinand said. Di Luna inclined his head a little, but he didn’t say anything for fear of causing offense.

And, to give Ferdinand credit, the guard certainly had known where to find Ferrando. He returned with a slightly bemused and annoyed looking Ferrando a couple of minutes later, just before the action really started, and Di Luna signaled for him to sit down next to him.

“I thought the Count might want some company, since Leonora brought her companion,” Eleanor said over the crowd noise.

“Ah. Thank you, your Grace.” For somebody who clearly did not want to be here, Ferrando was doing a laudable job of pretending that he actually did — but Di Luna supposed that was self-preservation instinct, considering that it was the Queen of Aragon that he was addressing and not just any woman off the street, or even Di Luna. He certainly wasn’t afraid to speak his mind to his master even though for most soldiers this would prove to be a terrible idea, but perhaps the Queen would have been a bit too far to push it. Well, that was probably sensible.

* * * * *

Queen Eleanor’s assumption that Leonora would have been interested in crowning the victor of this tournament had been a good one. Leonora had never really been exposed to this sort of all-male world as a child, even though she had grown up with a lot of men in her life, and now that she was married she didn’t really get much opportunity. It wasn’t as though she and Di Luna would have been producing any children but apparently she still had to be kept out of harm’s way in case she started to do anything untoward, even though there was no real chance of her doing that.

She admired the men, of course, but she wasn’t actually attracted to any of them. Not even her husband, not that she was above vaguely going through the motions with him if it made him happy — although it didn’t seem to do that for him either. But she had always found herself fascinated by it — as a child she had even attached herself to a very bemused Ferrando, because she had seen him talking to the people that she was around and she was interested in what his world might have looked like. He had been perfectly polite to her and when she had been allowed to he had taken her on very short patrols with him, just because she was so curious and he seemed to appreciate the audience, but she had still never seen anything like this before, and she was fascinated with it.

Unfortunately, Ferrando did not seem to be enjoying it — but he had been dragged into a conversation about Di Luna’s grandmother with Queen Eleanor so he seemed to at least be distracted. Di Luna was barely paying attention — he was talking to his cousin but once again that seemed fair, since they probably had some sort of royal affairs to attend to (the fact that Di Luna was a royal was so strange to her, even though God knew he went on about it enough for her to have got the message a thousand times over. He thought that he should have been the King of at least Sicily, if not Sicily and Aragon, but, well, that wasn’t going to happen without a war and he didn’t seem too interested in warmongering). Ines was paying a little attention to the tournament, but she mostly seemed to be looking in a strange way at Di Luna and Ferrando for some reason. Leonora couldn’t figure her out most of the time — that was part of what she liked about her, after all — but this really was inscrutable of her, especially since they weren’t even talking.

Well, she would have to ask about it later, because her attention was fully captured by the fighting going on.

She vaguely remembered Ferrando complaining about tournaments when she and Di Luna had only recently married — there had been a plan for one as part of their wedding celebrations but unfortunately the area had been in a constant state of civil war at the time so it had just never happened — because he had seen men die in real wars and he didn’t like the idea of making light of them. But this didn’t look violent at all: in fact, it put Leonora more in mind of dancers than of soldiers, even though these men were surely all trained in warfare, and it fascinated her.

What fascinated her more, though, was the fact that there was one knight who very much did not seem to subscribe to the idea that this was just for fun. He was dressed in a plain black suit of mail — he had no livery or banner — with a large plume in his helm, and he rode a tall, muscular chestnut horse. Most of the other knights were riding smaller, more elegant destriers that were clearly not built for real battle — this was fine, because this very much was not real battle — but this horse looked as though it was accustomed to pulling a plough in the winter, or moving tents and building materials, and ploughing through enemies the rest of the time.

It wasn’t really any great surprise that this nameless knight — when she managed to get his attention, even Ferdinand hadn’t known who he was but he had been curious enough to watch him joust for a couple of minutes, until his opponent was inevitably knocked off his horse with a dramatic thud — bested all of his opponents on horseback. What was a surprise, though, was that at no point did he raise the visor of his helmet, even though most of the men and even some of the ladies attending the tournament were curious to see his face. Even Di Luna, when his attention landed on the field for a few seconds, looked curious about him, but still he was completely unknown and unknowable.

“I think,” Queen Eleanor said to Leonora, “that you will be crowning that young knight as the champion.”

“Hopefully without his killing anybody,” Ines said, raising her eyebrows. Leonora laughed. “You can find out his name and what he thinks he’s playing at when you crown him.”

“Oh, he’s probably some young Knight who’s far too enthusiastic about having a captive audience,” Ferdinand said dismissively. “He’ll calm down as he gets older. I did.”

Leonora wasn’t so sure — and she wasn’t so sure that she would just accept that as happily as Ferdinand but men were strange — but she wasn’t about to argue. He had actually been to war so he probably knew about these things. She just didn’t, and she wasn’t sure that she particularly cared to — she just wanted to have a little fun, not have a lesson on military planning.

“He’ll be a fine addition to any fighting force, I’m sure,” he said, but Leonora wasn’t so sure. She could tell from the look on his face that Ferrando wasn’t sure either, and she was more inclined to believe him — he actually spent time with the men in the army, which Ferdinand didn’t seem to do so much any more.

Then again, Ferdinand wasn’t wrong about himself. He had been quite wild in his youth, from what Leonora knew, but marriage and suddenly finding himself to be the King of Aragon had caused him to mature. That was certainly better than the alternative, which was for him to become a despot — and she knew that that happened too sometimes, she had heard about it considerably. It was usually a cautionary tale that had been told to either her, since she would have been a far higher-ranking noble had she married her parents’ first choice of husband, or, later, Di Luna. It made more sense for him to be told the cautionary tales, since he was the one who was actually in danger, or whatever it was, of becoming a monarch. The best she could hope for was to be Queen, but she wasn’t sure that her husband was ever going to become the King of anything.

He didn’t actually seem to care too much for his cousin, but, well, he had to respect Ferdinand, because Ferdinand was the King of Aragon and could very well have had him executed or otherwise punished (but… well, he probably wouldn’t have objected to that, knowing what he liked to have done to him. That was just another reason that they were completely incompatible, not that she was afraid of the idea but more because it baffled her, and she thought that he should probably have had somebody who actually liked the same things as him, which she emphatically did not). And the fact that Ferdinand was the King must have afforded him some sort of protection from the sorts of people who might talk about his gender, which she was sure that they would under other circumstances. Generally, he seemed to know what was good for him, or at least he did in this case. Generally he seemed to be particularly stupid.

She was still very, very curious about this nameless knight, though. Ferrando seemed to have his eye on him as well — he looked far more interested in this mysterious knight than he had been in any of the other contenders, certainly, but Leonora could only assume that that was because the rest of them had all been a little, well, boring. Very pretty, but clearly afraid to get their clothes dirty or any mud on their horses. This knight, on the other hand, looked like even if he wasn’t planning to actively wound his enemies certainly seemed as though he was really putting his whole body into it. Even factoring in the fact that his horse was tall, he was clearly a full head taller than the next tallest knight contending, too, and broad shouldered underneath his armor and chain-mail.

She certainly knew that the padded undershirt that went underneath chain-mail and even plate armor, even though she knew very few knights who wore it because it tended to be vulnerable to swords, could give somebody the appearance of being rather wider across the shoulders than they actually were. She had seen it with Ferrando who, while he certainly wasn’t weak and looked very well-suited to his job through years of swinging a sword around, actually wasn’t anywhere near as wide across the shoulders as his chain-mail made him look. Di Luna was much the same, although she assumed that that was a deliberate choice on his part; he wasn’t actually weak, he could pick Leonora up physically even though she was taller than him (and had generally been the one being asked to throw him around, but, well, the less said about that part of their relationship the better) and she had seen him with a sword. Even though it clearly wasn’t something that he was trained in doing but he was perfectly good at it and what he lacked in training he more than made up for in brutality.

But this knight… Well, for one thing he had the same brutal way of swinging a sword as Di Luna seemed to have — the same way of inclining his shoulder forward and letting his arm go loose and everything, which was odd, or would have been odd had she not assumed that he was some sort of out-of-practice officer who hadn’t done a lot of fighting in the last few years but wanted to prove that he still could. And, to be fair, it seemed very much as though he could — he was still completely undefeated even an hour in and Leonora was quite sure that most of the other competitors were considering giving up by now. She certainly would have been, had she somehow been the one competing against him, so she wasn’t sure that she could blame them.

“What do you make of all this?” Leonora turned slightly towards Ferrando, who looked as though he was surprised just to have been addressed, considering that everybody else had pretty much been ignoring him since he had been summoned. (He was still looking like he was regretting accepting the invitation, especially considering that he was basically being completely ignored now that he was here, but, well, it wasn’t really an invitation when it came from the King of Aragon, was it?) “Or do you make anything of it?” She wasn’t completely sure that he actually would have had an opinion — he certainly didn’t look like he had one — but she felt guilty for his apparent exclusion from whatever was going on.

“I make it…” Ferrando made a face, clearly trying to come up with something that wasn’t just an out-and-out insult, since that probably wouldn’t have gone down too well in front of the King and Queen. “Strange, would be the word.” Leonora heard Eleanor laugh, but didn’t look back at her — she was probably having a conversation with her husband or with Di Luna in any case and she probably wouldn’t be too interested in what Ferrando had to say. Di Luna was an exception to the stereotype that nobles generally ignored the men who worked for them and treated them as though they were little more than part of the furniture but she could say that his habit had worn off on her. (And she had been friendly with Ferrando in her youth — that wasn’t something that she had any desire to abandon.) “Maybe it’s just that I think lances are ridiculous.” He gestured towards the jousting, which Leonora had to agree looked rather silly.

That made Di Luna laugh too, and for the first time Leonora picked up on the way that Di Luna looked at Ferrando. She couldn’t quite figure out what it was but he certainly seemed to have more affection for Ferrando than he had for her, although she couldn’t exactly blame him — Di Luna and Ferrando spent plenty of time together even when they weren’t both off at war but Di Luna and Leonora mostly ignored each-other, even though they didn’t get on poorly. She had always assumed that whatever he had with Ferrando was more of just the sort of friendship that formed between two people who had been off to war together, as they had more than a couple of times, and nothing more than that but looking at how Di Luna looked at Ferrando, well, she was now beginning to think that maybe his feelings were a little more complicated than just that.

“Jousting is stupid,” Di Luna agreed. “But so is…” He gestured. “You know. The whole instrument of warfare.”

Ferrando shrugged. “Well, I would like to keep my job, my Lord, so I think you should keep it.” He looked back at the tournament. “…All this can go, though, if you aren’t interested in it.”

Eleanor laughed and looked between Leonora and Ferrando and Di Luna. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you had a bad influence, Fadrique.” She was clearly joking but Di Luna still went red in a way that was just uncharacteristic for him. Leonora pretended to be fascinated by the jousting all of a sudden but she was really thinking about what might have been happening between Ferrando and Di Luna. Her first assumption had just been that Di Luna was interested in him but based on his reaction to being told that Ferrando was a bad influence made her think that maybe it was a little more mutual. She didn’t know whether or not she was going to have to “have a word” with him about it, but she would have to make sure he knew she knew.

“Did I ever tell you about your…” Ferdinand made a face, but Leonora could identify it as “trying to untangle the family wreath” rather than anything less well-meaning. “Your…” He frowned and then looked at Di Luna to make it clear that he was who was being addressed. “Well, I think he’s some sort of nephew to you. He’s my nephew, certainly, so we’ll just call him your nephew as well.”

“Well, there are plenty of those on my grandfather’s side of the family,” Di Luna said. “I don’t know if this is one I’ve met, though — carry on.”

“John,” Ferdinand said. Leonora had guessed that he might have forgotten the name, but she hadn’t wanted to say anything about it. “The minor King of Castille.”

“One of my uncles lives at his court, I believe,” Di Luna said. He looked confused about whatever this could have been about, and so was Leonora. But she was mostly just curious about what he could have had to say about this mysterious nephew of Di Luna’s that he had apparently forgotten about the existence of. “I don’t know the uncle or him, though,” he said.

“That’s probably for the best,” Ferdinand said. Leonora inclined her head curiously, keen to find out what was so offensive about this King of Castille that even his uncle seemed to despise him. “He really isn’t worth anybody’s time.” Ferdinand rolled his eyes.

“That’s not quite fair, Ferdinand,” Eleanor said magnanimously. “He was only a child when his father died; he hasn’t really had the opportunity to grow into himself or to his rank. I’m sure he’ll learn.”

“Hopefully he’ll learn not to listen to that uncle of Fadrique’s,” Ferdinand said. “He’s a ‘friend’ of the King’s, but he was only allowed to be one after I became the King of Aragon.”

“From what I’ve gathered, I come from a very long line of social climbers,” Di Luna said. It sounded as though he wasn’t too keen on his uncle either, but it also sounded as though he had heard enough about his exploits to have a low opinion. “He was illegitimate but somehow managed to make his way into John’s inner circle even while Ferdinand was Regent.” He was clearly saying this more for Leonora’s benefit — Ferdinand must have known to have disliked it, and to have disliked Di Luna’s strange uncle, as much as he did.

“Of course, now that I’m the King of Aragon I can’t very well be the regent of Castille, so his mother has taken my role, and…”

“She’s an old fool,” Eleanor said. Leonora laughed, although she was very unsure about what this could have meant and was more just keen to find out more. “Your uncle must have put some sort of spell on her, and on him,” she huffed, “because I certainly can’t imagine a man being so taken with another man for any other reason.” Ferrando made a noise similar to laughter, but slightly less friendly, that Eleanor must have missed, but Di Luna went very pale. That certainly suggested that there was something going on between the two men, even though Leonora couldn’t say what it could have been. “Especially not the King of Castille.”

“It sounds more like he was looking for somebody he thought he could trust, but he didn’t choose the right person,” Leonora admitted. She hoped that she wouldn’t regret speaking out of turn, but fortunately the way Eleanor looked at her suggested that she hadn’t been doing so to begin with.

“Well, we’ll have him married off to somebody who can get rid of… what was his name?” He looked at Eleanor, and then at Di Luna.

“Álvaro?” Di Luna suggested. It was a big family so it didn’t surprise Leonora that he had forgotten the name of at least one of his relations but it was still amusing.

“That’s him,” Ferdinand agreed. “Well, hopefully whoever he chooses can get rid of him. I don’t want him near that boy.”

“Nor do I,” Eleanor agreed. “Unfortunately, his mother likes him, and, since she’s his Regent right now, there’s nothing you can do.” She looked at Ferdinand. “So I advise that you don’t worry about it, since it would be pointless now that you’re no longer his Regent.” She crossed one leg over the other. “If it comes down to it then you can always ask the Pope to intercede.”

“I don’t think I’d want him excommunicated,” Ferdinand said.

“Do you think he’s going anywhere that being ordained in God would help him in the first place?” Di Luna asked, surprising Leonora by opening his mouth at all, since he seemed to have stopped bothering with the conversation at hand and was pretending to watch the tournament, although Leonora could see from the direction that he was looking that he was actually watching Ferrando.

He surprised both Ferdinand and Eleanor with his response, but Leonora not so much — she didn’t spend much time around him usually but she knew just how sarcastic he could be so the fact that he could act like that didn’t shock her. On the other hand, even though they lived in the same palace, Aljafería was a large compound so he saw very little of either Ferdinand or Eleanor so they didn’t know just how… it wasn’t so much sarcastic as just plain unpleasant he was capable of being.

In this case, though, what he had said had been pretty funny, not that Leonora would let onto it. She didn’t want to encourage him to carry on being annoying, since he would just think that people actually approved of it, which she very much did not — he wasn’t nearly as funny, or as interesting, as he thought he was.  
Ferdinand seemed to have tired of talking to Di Luna now, which didn’t surprise Leonora, because she was tired of paying attention to him. Instead, he turned to Ferrando, who looked surprised again to have been acknowledged. “You said that you haven’t much interest in…” He waved his arm broadly. “Well, in all this business, my good fellow, but I understand you’ve accompanied my cousin on campaigns all over Iberia.”

Ferrando nodded. “I have, your Grace. My Lord the Count’s father and I were close all through my service,” he explained, “he trusted me to accompany him personally on civilian exercises as well as military, and now I fill the same purpose for his son.”

“Ah, so he inherited you.”

Di Luna laughed. “In a manner of speaking, I suppose,” he said. “Not that I’m not grateful, of course.” But he was clearly saying this more for Ferrando’s benefit than anybody else’s. “I think my father had the right idea, honestly. Ferrando has a lot more sense than a lot of nobles — me included.” Ferrando didn’t look like he knew how to react to that, but Leonora was just amused by the whole business. Considering how drunk he had been when Leonora and Ines had come to find him and Ferrando, on the other hand, Di Luna was acting remarkably normally. Leonora would have been impressed had she not thought that he was stupid to begin with. “I think the only Tournament I’ve been to that I actually enjoyed—”

“Not keen either?” Ferdinand cut in. “Between you and me, nor am I, but one must keep up appearances.” As though to prove a point, he applauded a particularly theatrical fall off a horse from one of the knights. The mysterious knight was nowhere to be seen, so Leonora supposed that the others must just have been entertaining themselves until he came back — they clearly already knew that he was going to win, and, by the look of it, so did most of the crowd. “All the tumbling business… you’d think they’d all just become jesters if that was the sort of employment they were after.” He looked at Ferrando. “And a damn sight less dangerous.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that, your Grace.” Ferrando looked back at the field for a moment. “I’ve seen real battles less violent than this.”

“I’ve certainly read about melées that ended with almost as many deaths as a genuine war,” Eleanor agreed. “Although that might have been hyperbole, I don’t know.”

“I certainly hope so,” Leonora said. She was glad that there didn’t seem to be any real injuries — not even amongst the very fragile-looking horses, even though she had seen a horse get up wrong and have to stay off one leg for weeks at a time. It was remarkable that people rode them into war, considering how fragile they were, but humans were just as bad, she supposed. “It seems as though killing is… a bit against the spirit of the thing,” she said. “Or maybe it isn’t — I don’t know.” She looked here at Ferrando, who she assumed would probably know what was actually in the spirit of chivalry.

“It seems counterintuitive, I suppose, especially during peace-time,” Ferrando agreed.

The mysterious nameless knight was back again, and Leonora almost expected that his opponents would just hand the victory to him. She certainly would have done, but that was probably against the spirit of the tournament too, she supposed. It wasn’t really something that she knew too much about but it didn’t quite seem right to her. “Do you really not know who he is?” She asked this question generally to everybody sitting in the royal box with her, rather than addressing it to either Di Luna or Ferdinand, even though she assumed that one of them would have been the person to know what was going on.

“I don’t, I’m afraid,” Ferdinand said. “Fadrique, do you…?”

“He looks familiar,” Di Luna admitted, but he did it in a non-committal tone. Ferrando gave him a look that suggested that he was thinking about how far away they were from the field and how Di Luna could have known what the knight looked like in the first place, but he seemed to decide against it. Probably sensible, since they were in the presence of the King and Queen, who probably wouldn’t have taken too kindly to him being openly rude to his master, even if that was just how the two men were and he meant no ill will by it. “It would be easier if he had some standard, of course, but I can’t shake the thought I’ve seen that armor before.”

“It’s armor, surely,” Leonora said. “How different can one man’s be from the next?”

“You’d be surprised,” Ferdinand said. “Oh, there they go now — I can’t see this ending well for that little destrier.”

Nor could Leonora. Not only was the nameless knight mounted on a huge charger that looked from Leonora’s vantage point as though he was as tall at the shoulder as the horse that the other knight, clad in a green surcoat decorated with what looked like sea creatures, rode was at the head, but his larger size and apparent musculature had allowed him to wield a far more formidable lance than most of the other knights.

“I suppose it’s probably a good thing that this is the last match,” Leonora said, grimacing. “I can’t see that that other knight will be able to go on for much longer, after…” She shuddered at the thought, and once again found herself wondering what it was that Di Luna found appealing about any sort of rough treatment. Well, she probably wouldn’t have to talk to him about it — it wasn’t as though they had been together for a good while and she couldn’t see that changing any time soon.

“I think you’re enjoying this more than any of us, Leonora,” Eleanor said, partly in response to Leonora’s commentary but partly just because neither of the two men were paying attention and Ines seemed to have disappeared — although Leonora couldn’t blame her. She didn’t like crowds and she probably wasn’t too keen on all this violence. (It was still strange that Ferrando had tried to pretend that he didn’t object and that he had actually been enjoying the tournament just to annoy Ines, but she supposed that that was just how men were. Di Luna didn’t make sense on just about any level but maybe Ferrando made even less sense than his Master.)  
She sounded pleased that she wouldn’t have to participate in the pageantry of congratulating the victor of the tournament and giving them the golden laurel crown, not least because she clearly hadn’t been paying attention while it had been ongoing, and Leonora didn’t think that the knights would be particularly grateful under those circumstances. Leonora had been paying close attention, on the other hand, so it had been a good decision on Eleanor’s part that she let Leonora crown the victor.

The two knights were now in place to charge at each other, although the crowd must by now have known who was going to win and were just waiting to see Leonora, who was quite short, crown this gigantic man, who must have been taller even than Ferrando (or maybe it was just a trick of the angle that she was seeing him at and the fact that he was so obviously muscular that made him also look insanely tall. She didn’t know how tall the knight in the green surcoat was either). The other knight had performed well too — Leonora would have to tell Di Luna to offer him a drink, since it would probably have been inappropriate for her to do so herself — but he was clearly no match for the tall knight on the massive carthorse-looking beast.

The match went just as Leonora had predicted — the two men charged at each other to much cheering from the crowd but practically the second the mysterious knight’s lance touched his chest, the knight in the green surcoat fell from his horse. He was dragged by the animal for a few metres as it panicked at the sight of a massive horse charging towards it, at which point the nameless knight leaped off his own horse, which stopped dead and started eating the grass, and grabbed the flapping reins of the other horse before it could go careening straight into the crowd, giving the other knight enough time to untangle himself from the stirrup and right himself. He shook the nameless knight’s hand, and took the reins of his own horse back.

Now this seemed to get Ferdinand’s attention: he sat up a little straighter and watched the mysterious knight, before turning to look at Leonora. “I certainly didn’t have him down as a gentleman as well as a soldier.” Ferrando gave him a strange look in response to that, but he didn’t actually say anything. “One of you.” He gestured to his two guards who were still at the entrance to the royal box. “See to it that both those knights are provided with a drink after the ceremony.”

“Yes, your Grace.”

Well, he deserved that. They both did, Leonora thought, not just the nameless knight. He had returned to his gigantic horse rather than allowing one of the grooms to take him, but he cast a look back over his shoulder at his adversary to make sure he was walking alright. That was fair — he had fallen with quite some force and Leonora could see that the nameless knight’s lance had splintered, even though she had thought that he had barely made contact.

“I think he could be a useful officer for you, Fadrique,” Ferdinand said. Di Luna nodded, but didn’t say anything. “He might not be a born officer but I imagine he’s a damn sight more decency than a lot of the men born and bred to it.” He looked at Ferrando. “Although, from what I know of his father maybe it’s you I ought to be addressing that to.” Ferrando laughed, but he clearly didn’t know how to respond verbally to that, so he didn’t try. Leonora could tell that Ferdinand wanted to have an actually reciprocal conversation, though, and her suspicion was confirmed when he decided to try again. “Although… Well, I don’t know. It’s been a while since I’ve seen proper military service.”

“Since before you were elected King, I imagine, your Grace,” Ferrando said.

“Exactly, exactly. Far too dangerous for them to allow me to die, even though the planning and administration part of it isn’t my natural bent.” He laughed. “I’d much prefer to be out there fighting than in a tent talking about how they should be fighting. It never goes the way you plan for it to — I can’t think why.” Ferrando laughed at that, too. “So I’m not really sure if the sort of really ungallant brutes are still drawn to the military, or to being knights.”

“It truly depends on the men, your Grace,” Ferrando said. “Some officers follow your example and refuse to entertain it because it does nothing for morale. Others… I suppose they look the other way.”

“Or they’re the ones acting in a way not befitting of their rank,” Di Luna cut in, in a much less conversational tone than either Ferdinand or Ferrando had been speaking in.

Leonora didn’t have to wonder what that could have been in reference to, because she had seen how badly the soldiers and even some of the other nobles could treat poor Di Luna, but she felt bad all the same. She could usually avoid strange men, or use the fact that her husband had the image of being frighteningly unstable even though he was more just strange to her advantage, because it wasn’t as though the men actually knew that much about Di Luna. He couldn’t avoid other men, though, nor did he have any way to use somebody else’s rank against them, unless it was his cousin, or maybe Ferrando if he would consent to it.  
The nameless knight, on the other hand, did not look as though he would have that problem. Leonora allowed Ferdinand to guide her from the royal box — she supposed that it wouldn’t be inappropriate, since she was married to his cousin and he was also married, although he and Eleanor were far better suited than she and Di Luna could ever have hoped to be, even if they both put the sort of effort into their relationship that produced genuine companionship rather than just two people who spent time together sometimes and happened to be married. She had thought that maybe the fact that the nameless knight was so much taller than the other contenders had something to do with his horse, or just the angle that the Royal Box was placed at, but this clearly was not the case — and it was obvious that he would have no trouble defending himself if it came down to it.

“You’ve caused us some confusion, good Knight, not competing under a banner,” Ferdinand said, his tone friendly but still curious.

Now that Ferdinand and Leonora had approached him, the knight had removed his helmet, although he still towered over both Leonora and Ferdinand. Leonora too was a little taller than Ferdinand — she was a tall woman, so the fact that she was taller than her husband and her husband’s cousin wasn’t a huge surprise, and it was certainly interesting to meet a man who was so tall, too — but the fact that this knight was so tall had her interested in a way that she rarely was.

Now that he was without his helmet she could see that he wasn’t bad-looking either. She could only guess that he was a noble of some form, or at least that he was from a noble family even if they had since fallen on hard times, because he had the same bearing as Di Luna had, but he looked like a noble that had been left out in the woods to grow tusks for a few years. His hair was unfashionably long and a tiny bit curly, but not in the same way as Di Luna’s was. Di Luna looked as though he had brushed his hair at least once in the last few years, for one thing, but this knight’s hair was unruly and messy, and a kind of dark brown. It wasn’t messy in an unpleasant way — in fact, she had found Di Luna’s preening insufferable at times — but it was still noticeable and it still interested her.

“Well, I hope you enjoyed my…” He searched for a word for a moment. “Performance, I suppose, even so.”

“We did,” Leonora said. He knelt down to allow Leonora to place the golden laurel crown on his head — had there not been a massive height difference between them she would have been able to do so without his needing to do this, but she barely reached his chest — and as he got up again, Ferdinand gestured over towards the royal box. “You can return to your wife if you like, your Grace,” Leonora added.

“Yes, I will.” Ferdinand nodded, and the Knight bowed. “Rejoin us when you’re ready — don’t rush yourself. I can’t imagine anybody will object.” Leonora cast a look back at the Royal Box, and saw that Di Luna was talking to Ferrando again but she was fascinated enough with this nameless knight that she couldn’t bring herself to care for whatever it was her husband was doing.

“We didn’t even know your name, Knight,” Leonora said, as soon as Ferdinand was out of earshot, although she knew that she shouldn’t have been talking about anything untoward even in his earshot. He didn’t always like Di Luna but he was remarkably protective of him and his happiness when he wanted to be. (And that was to say nothing of Ferrando, who was very defensive of what remained of Martin the Younger’s family, although she couldn’t help but think that that was for obvious reasons.)

“Manrico, my lady.” He had dark brown eyes — Di Luna’s were a sort of grey-blue — and the same sort of freckles as Di Luna had, covering most of his face but darker over the bridge of his nose and his cheeks, but he didn’t also have the dark circles under his eyes and slightly pale skin that came from the Count’s incomprehensible sleeping habits and generally poor health. Generally, she couldn’t shake the feeling that they looked similar — but then again, all nobles did, didn’t they? They were all related; he and Di Luna were probably some sorts of distant cousin.

He was certainly far more attractive than Di Luna, she could say that with complete certainty.


	3. Chapter 3

Leonora was sure that she would have to say something to somebody, or she would burst.

The problem was that what she was doing — or what she was strongly contemplating doing — was an absolutely dreadful idea and would ruin the days of everybody around her, especially that of her husband. Of course, it wasn’t as though he wasn’t acting strangely enough as it was without his wife having an affair with a man loyal to his detested enemy, but she couldn’t help but think that if she did anything with Manrico, even just meeting him, it might well send him right over the edge.

But she still had to tell somebody, because she had never thought that she would actually be in love. It was sad to think that she had resigned herself to a loveless life because of her loveless marriage, but it was even sadder to think that she could not discuss her feelings with anybody because they were for if not her enemy then her husband’s enemy. Di Luna was certainly capable of being rational, she supposed, but this wasn’t one of those situations where she thought he would respond with anything other than rage. It wasn’t so much that she thought he would be violent, not least because he knew that she was far stronger than him and that other people would be more likely to be on her side than on his. He had a reputation for being unlikeable.

And, of course, she didn’t want to think about how Ferrando would react to what she was doing. She was completely sure now that he had some sort of feelings for Di Luna, and that Di Luna reciprocated them even if both of them were too obstinate to actually act on their feelings, so the fact that she thought he would be furious about it if she were to have an affair, which would also leave Di Luna free to do what he liked with Ferrando, was stupid. But he had also experienced plenty of unpleasant things that probably wouldn’t have left her particularly rational, either. At least, she thought, there was no chance of her having children with Di Luna, because the idea of losing a child as had happened to V— honestly terrified her.

The only person she could really talk to about her feelings for Manrico was Ines, but she also knew that Ines would think that she was a complete idiot. Of course, that was partly because she honestly was — she had only met Manrico once before he had started appearing under her window and she was sure that he would just disappear during the civil war that was brewing, whether he wanted to disappear or not — but she didn’t actually want to have that pointed out to her. Especially not by her best friend, but unfortunately Ines was very, very forthright with her feelings and wouldn’t hold back from calling her an idiot.

Unfortunately (or possibly not unfortunately, she didn’t know yet), though, there truly wasn’t anybody else that she could confide in, so it was Ines that she invited to her rooms, under the guise of playing chess. Ines was practically-minded but Leonora hoped that that wouldn’t meant that she would suggest that Leonora try to forget about Manrico. She couldn’t imagine doing that — he was so kind to her and actually seemed to appreciate spending time with her. She didn’t think that Di Luna actively disliked her but he didn’t seem to like being with her. Partly because it would often lead to her wanting intimacy, especially since the tournament, which just made him uncomfortable. While he could be maddening, she was sympathetic to his feelings about his own body and she didn’t want to make things worse for him, which she could easily have done.

“You don’t play chess, Leonora.” Ines almost looked smug as she opened the door to Leonora’s bedroom. She didn’t knock — she didn’t have to, they were so close that Leonora would have been happy for her just to wander in at her leisure — but Leonora couldn’t hide just how glad she was to see her. “You can’t think enough steps in the future.”

“That’s why I only play with Fadrique,” Leonora said. “He can barely think half the time, let alone plan ahead. That’s why he lets…” She trailed off, because this was not the conversation that she wanted to be having, and she could tell that it wasn’t the conversation that Ines wanted to be having, either.

“Lets what?”

Well. She had thought it wasn’t the conversation that Ines wanted to be having. Maybe it was really obvious that she had done something that she under no circumstances should have done, and Ines didn’t want anything to do with it, and that wasn’t something that she could blame Ines for. She really had done something completely ridiculous in deciding to have an affair with a man other than her husband. It wasn’t as though Ines didn’t know that she didn’t love Di Luna, but she also probably assumed that she was just putting up with it, rather than going out of her way to ruin their relationship.

“He lets his army officer do all the organising for him. His father did the same, though, so it figures.” Leonora shrugged.

“I’m sure he does,” Ines said. Leonora could sense that she had gossip, and she also wanted to hear about it far more than she wanted to hear that she was being stupid from Ines, which she knew was coming. “I mean, they’re all… that way, aren’t they?”

“What way?” Leonora sat down cross-legged on her bed, and Ines sat down on a chair near to it.

“Men who spend all their time with other men, I mean,” Ines said, in an obviously suggestive tone.

Leonora snorted with laughter. “I don’t think my husband’s father was that way inclined,” she said. “Fadrique, on the other hand…” She made a face. It was pretty clear to her that Di Luna had feelings for Ferrando and that Ferrando reciprocated those feelings, but when she thought about it logically rather than from the point of view of somebody trying to get out of a marriage that she didn’t want so that she could be with a man that she did want, who she had only met recently, she could see that she might have just been thinking wishfully. She certainly would have liked for Di Luna and Ferrando to have been in love with each other, because it would just have made her life orders of magnitude easier and she would have felt less guilty. “Well…” She sighed and tried to come up with some definite evidence for what she was saying. “I mean, you were at the tournament, you saw them together when we came to find them.”

“Ferrando looked more like he was praying for it all to be over,” Ines said. “Not that I can blame him, of course, but I think you might be reading too much into something.”

“I might,” Leonora agreed. “But I don’t want to be.”

“Aren’t you meant to be married to Di Luna?” Ines asked. “I can’t imagine he’s all that bad. He’s certainly annoying but I don’t think he’s ever done anything that was more than just… I don’t know, just being a pest.” Leonora tried to shrug non-committally. “I don’t know why you’d want to shove him into the arms of another man, anyway, it doesn’t sound like it bodes well for a happy marriage.”

“Do you think we have a happy marriage to begin with?” Leonora asked.

“Well, you seem to be about as happy together as any noble couple could be,” Ines pointed out. “Well, no, maybe that would be Ferdinand and Eleanor, actually, they really seem to like each other.”

“Mm.” Leonora shrugged again. “They have more in common than I do with Fadrique, though,” she pointed out.

“I don’t know, if you and him both like men that might be plenty to have in common,” Ines joked. “Unless he does and you don’t, I mean, but you could still have something in common that way too…” She trailed off, sounding like she had reached the end of that particular thought. Leonora was glad, because she couldn’t have seen it going anywhere either good or useful. “You know what I mean.”

Leonora did, but she didn’t want to let on as such. She partly just wanted to see if that thought would have lead Ines to anywhere interesting, but partly just because she didn’t want to give Ines any more fuel than she already had — that could have been truly disastrous.

It wasn’t as though she didn’t like Ines, of course, but she did say some strange things when she wanted to or when a thought that she thought Leonora needed to hear when she definitely did not need to hear it entered her head, and she always seemed as though she wanted to do that. Leonora could be strange herself, but Ines combined being strange with being gossipy and annoying, so it probably made sense that Ferrando hadn’t much seemed to like her. (She didn’t think that she wanted them to be friends, either — Leonora was going to tell Ines that she was interested in Manrico and if she was friends with Ferrando then it would probably have got back to the Count very quickly because she knew from Di Luna that Ferrando liked to gossip. Since she and Di Luna were married, that would have been an absolutely dreadful thing to have happen to her.)

“Now that you mention it…” Ines raised her eyebrows. “Well, I did see the way they were looking at each other when you were off crowning that massive knight. I don’t think I’d look at somebody like that if I wasn’t imagining taking them to bed with me.” She looked up at Leonora again. “You still haven’t told me that Knight’s name, and it’s been weeks,” Ines added suddenly.

“His name is Manrico,” Leonora said. She tried to sound casual with it, just as though she had forgotten accidentally, but her expression must have betrayed what she was really feeling, because Ines started looking at her strangely as soon as she said it. “He said he was from Biscaya, that’s why he wasn’t fighting under a standard.”

“That…” Ines made a face. “That does not make any sense, Leonora, but I’m glad to hear it. Was he really that tall and…” She gestured in a way that was meant to indicate ‘broad’. “That way in person?”

“He was,” Leonora said.

“I would say he must have been a real soldier, not like some of the ‘officers’ who just sit around behind a desk, but, well, you’ve seen some of them, haven’t you?” she laughed. Leonora laughed too. “I could probably pick up your husband and throw him, never mind some of his other officers. And it would make sense if they could do that.” They were both laughing now, which made a change from how Leonora had been feeling for the past few days. She just hoped that Di Luna hadn’t noticed. “And he’s from Biscaya?” Her curiosity was clearly aroused now — maybe she knew somebody from there. Leonora couldn’t think of what could have had her so interested otherwise, because neither of them had never been there (or Ines hadn’t as far as Leonora knew. But Leonora was also a couple of years younger than Ines, so really anything was possible). “I think he could probably give Ferrando a run for his money.”

“Oh, probably,” Leonora agreed. They would probably have been an interesting match, too — Ferrando could be pretty feral, especially if he thought Di Luna was threatened and Manrico didn’t seem as though he had been trained in the same way as Ferdinand of Aragon’s army. Between them there would probably have been several injuries, even without Ferrando’s obvious lack of depth perception from only having one eye. But she hoped that it wouldn’t come down to that — she liked Manrico, yes, but she liked Ferrando too and thought that the idea of him and Manrico getting into it like that would have been dreadful. “I don’t think my husband would stand a chance, though,” she laughed.

Ines laughed in a way that suggested that she knew exactly what Leonora was getting at, but Leonora tried to resist the urge to just confess what had happened immediately. “I think your husband would make a good projectile, though,” she said. She had probably never seen Di Luna fighting properly before but Leonora got the impression from what she knew from both him and Ferrando that he was good at it. But Leonora also couldn’t help but find the idea of somebody deciding that the best use for her husband was throwing him absolutely hilarious. “I’m sure you’ve wanted to do that to him before.”

“Ferrando probably has too,” Leonora laughed. “He can be…” She made a face.

“Maddening?”

“That’s kinder than what I was thinking,” Leonora said. “But that’s certainly one word to describe him.”

“I don’t think you asked me to come here just so that we could talk about your husband behind his back, though,” Ines said. “For one thing I think we could do that to his face and he’d just get upset, not angry.” Leonora laughed. “What is it, then?” Leonora opened her mouth, but Ines stopped her from talking again. “And don’t pretend it isn’t anything; I know you better than that.” She leaned forward and rested her chin on her clasped hands.

“I’ve been having an affair with Manrico,” Leonora said, because she knew that Ines would have been able to get the facts out of her one way or another. She hadn’t got to the worst part of it yet, of course, but Ines would also manage to get that out of her, if Leonora didn’t just confess it all straight away. “He’s been coming to my window every night when I’m alone for the past few weeks,” she said, lowering her voice.

Just as she stopped speaking, one of her servants came in, but he saw that they were talking about something important and that they didn’t want to be disturbed, and bowed and ducked out of the room again. Ines grimaced and tipped her head towards the door that she had come in through, and Leonora took the point. If she had been a couple of seconds earlier then Leonora would certainly have had her secret revealed to Di Luna, and while she didn’t think he would react violently to her, she could only imagine what he would do to Manrico.

Or rather, she could only imagine what he would try to do to Manrico, and what he would have done to him in return. He was like a little dog that didn’t know how small it was and unfortunately this would make him likely to endanger himself, which Leonora didn’t want. She felt bad enough that she was having an affair, because she truly didn’t hate Di Luna even if she wasn’t attracted to him, but she would have felt dreadful if she had accidentally got him killed. (She could also only imagine how Ferrando would react, and she didn’t want that on her conscience, either.)

“So, he comes to your window every night.” Ines made a face. “Is that really having an affair?” she asked, “or do you just want it to be an affair because your relationship with your husband is so boring and he’s so much more interesting than Di Luna?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to tell you everything that we’ve been doing,” Leonora said bluntly. Ines laughed sharply, but then looked back at Leonora as though to ask her to go on — but without discussing just what she and Manrico had been doing. (Doing that would have involved telling her things about Manrico that he probably didn’t want anybody other than her knowing in any case, so she didn’t, just as she didn’t discuss her relationship with Di Luna, in as much as she even had one, with anybody but Di Luna.) “But we have certainly been having an affair, I’m not just fantasising about something that hasn’t happened yet.”

“Well, I won’t say a word, of course,” Ines said. Leonora nodded. “God knows you deserve somebody who actually likes you, rather than somebody who had to marry you.”

“Thank you.” Leonora hadn’t doubted that Ines would say this — but she was glad that her friend was going to be loyal to her even so. “Well, maybe Di Luna and I can have some kind of deal, he can—”

“—But I do think you’re an idiot,” she said.

“Why? You just said you wouldn’t…?” Leonora truly couldn’t figure out what Ines might have been getting at here but she wasn’t sure that she wanted to. “I mean, I know I am, but I didn’t expect for you to say it.”

“When haven’t I told you what I’m really thinking about something you do?” Ines said. Leonora was willing to concede that, at least, but she still didn’t understand the reason for it. “You and Di Luna might not be in love with each other but at least you put up with each other and don’t step on each other’s toes,” she pointed out. “But if you’ve started going behind his back and sleeping with your gigantic knight…” She laughed at something that took Leonora a couple of seconds to understand, and made her roll her eyes when she did. “Well, if he finds out — which he almost certainly will — I don’t think he’ll be so lenient with you any more.”

“That can be his problem.” Leonora shrugged. She and Di Luna had some sort of agreement about their relationship, which was essentially that they left each other alone unless one of them specifically needed something from the other. And they very rarely did need anything from each other, so they hardly saw each other, which worked perfectly well for both of them. But Leonora could still see that if her affair were to become known to the Count, then his behaviour might completely change. “And I’ll just have to hope that he doesn’t find out. You, me and Manrico are the only people who know,” she said, “and he certainly isn’t going to tell and neither am I.”

“Nor am I,” Ines agreed. “I’d certainly rather that you were happy, even if you are happy doing something completely stupid rather than staying in the relationship you’re in now.” She shrugged. “Anyway.” She had clearly seen an opportunity for sparking more gossip. “You said something about coming to an agreement with Di Luna. What’s all that about?”

“Him and his army officer,” Leonora said, forgetting that, as she hadn’t been inside Leonora’s head, Ines wouldn’t have the foggiest idea what she was talking about with them. “You were there when we went to the tournament — and you saw them together more than I did. You stayed behind when I went to crown Manrico.”

“I didn’t think there was anything going on there,” Ines said. “But, then again, I didn’t think much of him, either.” She shrugged. “But I wouldn’t, I suppose, I don’t think much of any men.”

Leonora laughed. She knew enough about Ines’ attractions to know that she had no interest in marrying a man, and she had introduced Leonora to a lot of young ladies who had been very excited to be with Ines. She also knew that she didn’t think much of most men, but then again Leonora was actually attracted to men and she rarely thought much of them. Manrico was probably the most tolerable man she thought she had ever met, and even he could be a bit stupid. He was a nice man, of course, but even though he was a few years older than her and an important Knight in the army of James Urgell, she was still considerably more mature than he was. From what she knew, though, he was a very loving son to his middle-aged mother, who he had said had always been a little mad — but he thought that she would love Leonora. She was keen to meet her too because from what Manrico had said she was a kind woman even if she did have a lot of problems, but she couldn’t imagine that it would be a good idea, with things the way that they were with her and Di Luna.

“Well, I might just be seeing things because I want a way out.” Leonora shrugged. “But I knew Ferrando when I was a child and I know for a fact that he never had lovers, never married…” She trailed off. “You know.”

“Married to his work?” Ines suggested. “And didn’t he find V—?” she added.

“True. I probably wouldn’t want to bring a partner around all that, I suppose,” she said. But she still couldn’t help but think that there was something in how Di Luna and Ferrando looked at each other. And it wasn’t as though Di Luna was bad looking, he was just an annoying person and she wasn’t attracted to him. Ferrando, on the other hand… well, they spent all their time together for one thing but they also struck her as just ideally suited to each other. “But you know what people say about soldiers,” she said.

“I suppose so,” Ines said. “But I always thought that was just rumors spread by overly-involved priests who want to paint the whole outfit as a den of iniquity, not…” She made a face. “Not that there was actually anything in it.” She looked towards the door again. “I don’t know, though. I’ll have to take a look at them next time I see them together — I wasn’t really paying any attention to them, and I certainly wasn’t looking at them like that.” She laughed, and then looked at Leonora. “So, do you think they’re already doing something?” she asked, after a few seconds of silence that Leonora didn’t know what to do with herself during. “Or are they just…” She gestured.

“I don’t think there’s anything going on,” Leonora said. “They would have been acting differently towards each other and Di Luna probably would have been acting differently towards me if there was something going on.” She laughed. “Although… it’s not like he spends a lot of time with me in any case, so he could be doing anything during the time we don’t spend together.” She wanted to laugh, but she also didn’t feel like she should have been — if they really were doing something then it could put them both in danger, which she didn’t want. She had always looked up to Ferrando like he was some kind of uncle, and while she didn’t love Di Luna she would probably have preferred that he didn’t get attacked or excommunicated for having a relationship with another man.

Of course, that was if the Church actually did view him as a man. She wasn’t entirely clear on what was going on with the Church in relation to Di Luna’s gender, mostly because it didn’t really affect her. They had been married in the Church so clearly they were prepared to put up with some things but maybe they would have preferred it if he was actually with another man, rather than having married a woman. (Leonora probably would have preferred it too, but that was more for her own personal gain. She would have preferred to be single so that she could be in a relationship with Manrico openly, rather than the fact that she would have to spend all her time sneaking around.)

“But… isn’t having to pretend you aren’t seeing him… annoying?” Ines asked. “I wouldn’t want to do it.” It was different for her, because nobody would look twice at two women being affectionate. Leonora couldn’t understand why, because it had always been perfectly obvious to her, but Ines seemed not to mind that she could use it to her advantage.

“Well, you wouldn’t want to have a relationship with any man, would you?” Leonora asked. Ines laughed and shook her head. “I would rather if I could be open, but…” She grimaced, because she had suddenly been forced to think of her lover’s allegience to her husband’s enemy. “But I don’t think I could have been open about my relationship with him in any case.”

“Oh?” Ines’ eyes lit up and she suddenly sat up straight, no longer resting her chin on her hands, and looked straight at Leonora, clearly expecting something fun rather than whatever Leonora was actually going to tell her. “Go on.”

This really seemed to have Ines curious, or at least it seemed to have her more curious than the initial story had had her, but Leonora wasn’t quite sure how to explain it without actually causing a scene. Ines was loyal to her, yes, but she was probably more loyal to the King of Aragon, and Leonora was supposed to be too. Queen Eleanor had come to like her and had now invited her into her household — being in love with a man who was in league with James Urgell would only have brought her trouble and dishonour, and she didn’t want that. (She also thought that it could have reflected poorly on Di Luna, which would have caused them both even more trouble.)

While Ines was technically Leonora’s friend before she considered herself to have anything to do with the Aragonese royal family — she was too far removed from the royals, since she was just Leonora’s companion, to actually have much contact with anybody outside of Leonora and occasionally Di Luna — Leonora was aware that she, like most other Aragonese people, greatly mistrusted James Urgell and his faction. The fact that Manrico was associated with them would probably cause her to raise her eyebrows at least and while Leonora didn’t think that she would actually betray her she knew that it would cause her some contention at the very least.

“Manrico is loyal to James Urgell,” Leonora explained. Before Ines could say something on this subject, because she was sure that Ines would have had plenty to say about it, she added, “don’t say a word to anybody about this.”

“I wouldn’t dare!” Ines said.

She clearly had her own reasons for this — probably the fact that she wanted to stir up a little trouble, not that Leonora could blame her, because things could get boring around here — but whatever it was, Leonora couldn’t help but be thankful for it. Well, she also probably didn’t want to know what Ines’ reasons were — she had confessed all of this of her own free will but Ines would probably be less receptive to the idea of confessing her ulterior motives without having started the conversation. Besides which, Leonora didn’t think she wanted to keep any more secrets than she already was. Quite aside from her own, she was also very keen not to let anybody know what she knew about Manrico — she couldn’t imagine that, for an officer who was apparently so closely involved with his men wouldn’t be in danger if what she knew about him came out.

She thought that he could probably have held his own against any of his men, and besides that, she had been told that the other men all respected him rather more than Di Luna’s men seemed to respect him. But, then again, if he looked like that (and he really was as strong up close as he had looked from far away — she could see why the other knights jousting at the tournament were so nervous of him, because he could probably have flattened them while barely expending any effort), she couldn’t imagine what his men could have looked like. They were probably just as large and well-built as him, if not more so.

“I think Di Luna would probably go mad if he found it,” Ines said. “So he really better hadn’t find out.”

Leonora nodded. “Not just him, I don’t think,” he said. “Well… all of the soldiers, I expect, for a start, but really Ferrando.”

“Why would he care?” Ines asked. “The whole thing with Ferdinand and Urgell isn’t his fight. It isn’t even Di Luna’s, really.” She raised her eyebrows, and went over to the sideboard to pour out a cup of wine for herself (fair considering the circumstances, but Ines could probably have done to drink a little less. Leonora barely drank, on the other hand), and then one for Leonora.

That was true, but Leonora still didn’t find it particularly reassuring, because Di Luna made very little sense and she could tell that Ferrando would just go along with whatever it was his master wanted to do, without putting in too much thought. Di Luna certainly wouldn’t be pleased that his wife was not only having an affair (and, not knowing anything about Manrico, he would probably assume that she would get pregnant, and he certainly wasn’t going to undeceive him), but that the affair he was having was with one of the chief officers of his enemy. (Well, of his cousin’s enemy, but that seemed to be all the same to the noblemen.)

“Well, I think Di Luna is just along for the ride,” Leonora admitted, “but I don’t think that’s going to change his opinion of what’s going on.” Ines brought the drinks over to the two of them, and Leonora immediately started drinking. That was partly so that Ines wouldn’t suspect pregnancy, which would have lead to a conversation that shouldn’t have been had because it would have outed Manrico, since Ines would never have believed Leonora otherwise, but partly just because she needed a drink. Everything had been extremely frustrating of late, so she could have done very well to have a drink. “It’s the honour part of it as much as it’s anything else. Not that it’s as though he can do anything of substance with me, anyway.”

“And this one can?” Ines asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Clearly not.” Ines didn’t look convinced. “I’m drinking, aren’t I?” Leonora said, which seemed to assuage her suspicions.

Ines shrugged. “Fair enough.” She went back to the sideboard and poured out a bit more wine, even though her cup was still half full. “Well, I can’t say I think it’s a good idea in any case,” she said, “but if having an affair with your husband’s enemy makes you happy…” She looked serious for a second, but then started laughed. “Sorry, I just… you always seem so sensible by comparison to him; I can’t imagine you wanting to have an affair.”

“To be honest, I didn’t expect it either,” Leonora admitted. “I wasn’t exactly happy with Fadrique,” she went on, “but it wasn’t as though I wanted to have an affair, especially not with one of Urgell’s henchmen. But I suppose that’s just how it’s turned out.” She sighed and leaned back on the bed. “We’re just better suited than I am to Fadrique, I suppose.”

“But it sounds like you think there’s somebody else that the Count is suited to,” Ines pointed out. “And if he is better suited to Ferrando… well, that explains why your marriage is so bad, I suppose.” Leonora hadn’t thought of that before, but that was because she had always assumed that he was just interested in men and women. It wasn’t as though she couldn’t imagine that being possible, but the idea that he was only interested in men certainly made everything make more than just a little more sense.

“You’ll just have to keep an eye on them both next time you see them together,” Leonora said.

“You know, I think I will.” Ines looked pleased that she had something new to gossip about, even though she didn’t seem to actually believe it, and even though Leonora could tell that she was far more interested in her affair with Manrico. “You know…” she said, finally, after finishing the rest of her cup of wine. “I seem to remember you said Manrico comes to visit you every evening.”

Leonora nodded, although she had no idea where this was going. It wasn’t as though she didn’t know what he looked like, after all. “He’s so… distinctive, I’m sure anybody who had been at the tournament would recognise him, and half the men were there — including our good master.” She looked confused now, and Leonora knew that she would have been best just letting her work it out for herself, so she didn’t say anything more. “Do you think there’s somebody in the palace just… letting him do this?”

“I doubt it,” Leonora said. “Di Luna doesn’t know that he’s one of James Urgell’s men but I still can’t imagine him not finding out and putting a stop to it, even if we were just friends.”

“Which you aren’t.”

“Which we aren’t,” Leonora agreed. “And which the Count and I aren’t, unfortunately,” she said. Ines looked interested but she didn’t say anything, so Leonora went on: “It isn’t that I don’t like him or that he doesn’t like me, but I just don’t think we can even manage being ‘married’ in the way that noble couples are, let alone in the sort of way that people who actually love each other are.”

“Hm?” She wasn’t sure if Ines was just trying to be polite, but now that Leonora had started talking she couldn’t bring herself to stop, even though it would probably have been in her best interest.

“I think it’s just that I’ve known him for so long,” she admitted. “I grew up with him, so it’s like…”

“Like trying to sleep with your brother?” Ines suggested. “Although… we all know royals don’t mind doing that.”

“Siblings is a bit much,” Leonora said. “But apparently cousins are acceptable.”

“Maybe the problem is that you aren’t related — you are both nobles after all,” Ines joked. That was true — Leonora was from a far lower-ranking noble family that was also completely unrelated to Di Luna’s family, which had been surprising on several levels when they had married; even for an arranged marriage they were an odd pair — and Leonora appreciated Ines’ attempt to lighten the atmosphere, even if she hadn’t been completely successful. “But, well, I suppose…” She started laughing. “You said him and Ferrando…” She laughed again. “They certainly aren’t related, but you seem to think they have something going on between them.”

“Well—”

“And I can’t blame you for seeking out somebody whose eyes don’t constantly scream ‘step on me’,” Ines said. Leonora too burst out laughing at that — it was such an unexpected thing for her to say, and the worst part of it was that she could definitely see what Ines was saying. And she knew from experience that Di Luna had some odd tastes. She guessed that must have been the cast for most of the nobles out there — she couldn’t imagine how they all managed to keep having such a huge number of children otherwise. (Of course, that wouldn’t ever happen with Di Luna, but that wasn’t something that she could actually do anything about. And it wasn’t as though she was interested in the idea of having children with Manrico, either, so there wasn’t really an issue there either.)

“Yes, I hope Ferrando will be more able to deal with…” Leonora gestured. “All that.”

Ines laughed at the covert admission that she had been right about Di Luna’s interests, and Leonora drank the rest of her wine. To be fair, she very much had been right in what she had said about Di Luna, he really did want to have strange things done to him that struck Leonora as being a symptom of being a noble rather than anything else. But that was another thing that Leonora didn’t think it was her business to confess to other people. Maybe a priest, if she felt like she needed it, but certainly not to Ines.

* * * * *

Despite Leonora’s best efforts, her conversation with Ines hadn’t gone completely unheard. The servant who had walked into the room at an inopportune point had had the wherewithal to think that maybe his mistress and her friend were having a conversation that she needed to hear, and so she had kept the door slightly open to listen at it. The problem was now that she was honour-bound to betray Leonora, even though she had heard the whole conversation — she knew that her having an affair with a man loyal to James Urgell would put not just her but the whole palace in danger. But she also knew that telling the Count directly might have lead to all sorts of trouble.

Despite what might have been her better judgement, she supposed, María found herself walking towards the barracks. She wasn’t stupid — she knew enough about the soldiers to know that Di Luna’s closest ally was his army officer Ferrando (although, while she had barely processed any of the conversation that hadn’t concerned Leonora’s affair, she also suspected that they were more than just close friends). She also knew that Ferrando was capable of being more sensible than his master, being older and also an officer, and therefore aware of how to comport himself.

She also knew that if he wasn’t at the barracks, then she would have an excuse for keeping what she knew to herself, and that was what she sincerely hoped was going to happen. Maybe he wouldn’t be there; she knew he spent more time in the palace than he spent in the barracks, anyway, and there were places in the palace that the servants weren’t allowed to go in. She would just say, if anybody questioned it for some reason, that she had thought that Ferrando and Di Luna were both out and neither of them was somewhere that she could reach them.

Of course, it was natural considering the day that María had had that Ferrando was standing just outside of the barracks with some of the new recruits, seemingly giving them a lecture about something that they weren’t interested in, based on the way they were all clearly pretending that they were paying attention. She almost considered just turning tail and going away, but of course that would never have been acceptable, so she waited for the recruits to leave and then went up to Ferrando.

“Ferrando, sir, can I talk to you about something?” She tried to keep her voice quiet, but the recruits of course still heard her and started to make some tittering noises, before Ferrando whipped around on them in a way that silenced them and sent them running for their duties, whatever those might have been, immediately.

Ferrando had a bit of a repuation for not being the nicest person, which might have been deserved but might have just been based on the fact that he never smiled and was missing an eye (as well as the various obvious scars on his face — he looked as though he might have come close to not having any eyes, based on the scar just underneath his remaining left eye), but María had never spent enough time with him to form an opinion. For one thing she was young enough to be his daughter and while that was apparently an acceptable age difference for nobles, she didn’t want anything to do with it. Also, she always got the impression that he wasn’t that interested in women. He certainly hadn’t been leering at her when she had arrived.

“You’re… María, aren’t you?” Well, apparently he knew her name. That was nice, at least. “One of Leonora’s maids.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“You don’t need to call me sir, I actually work for a living.”

María laughed. She had heard her father, who had been a sergeant all his life, make that same joke, and Ferrando looked pleased that she had actually smiled and not just looked completely blank when he had said it. “Yes, sir. It’s her that I wanted to talk to you about, actually.” Ferrando looked confused. “I know she isn’t your responsibility, but… Well, I can’t easily go to the Count, especially not with something like this.”

Ferrando looked puzzled, and not in a curious way, as he ushered her into the barracks. María had never actually been in the barracks and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to, but at least Ferrando seemed to be aware of the fact. He stood close enough to her that he could menace anybody who decided that they fancied trying anything with her, but far enough away that they weren’t touching, and tried to match her step rather than her matching his. Since he was rather tall and she was particularly short, she was glad of all of this, although she very much disliked the way they were leering at her. “Don’t worry, they won’t actually try anything.” Ferrando leaned down a little way to say this, but it wasn’t actually particularly reassuring. She didn’t particularly want the men thinking about her, either.

Fortunately, though, Ferrando had a private office rather than them having to have this conversation in public in the barracks, or outside, because María would never have wanted to have a conversation like this one where it could be overheard. For one thing, she was sure that the men would view it in a very strange way, especially since some of them had apparently been there at the Tournament and had therefore seen Leonora’s mysterious lover, but for another it was private and she was sure that Ferrando wouldn’t want to have it anywhere they could be overheard.

“Your master’s wife has a lover other than her husband,” María said bluntly. Ferrando tipped his head to the side, but he didn’t seem to object to her telling him this so bluntly rather than treading carefully around the subject. It was easier that way, for one thing, and for another she wanted to be out of there as quickly as she could.

“I don’t know why you’re telling me this,” Ferrando admitted. “I certainly don’t have any control over — or influence in — his marriage.” He didn’t look even remotely curious, which was strange, but she had heard that he had odd ways. “I think you assume I have more of a say in his life than I actually do, but… as you can tell from this office, I’m quite low down his list of priorities.”

That was fair, because the office clearly wasn’t really an office. It looked more like an old, or not-so-old, tack room for the cavalry that had a desk and a couple of chairs, as well as some bookcases, in it. There were even some very worn out saddles and bridles, and a couple of pieces of rusted chain-mail, on stands and in corners. Maríá would have had to concede, had she not known something very incriminating about her mistress’ lover.

“And I don’t care for gossip,” he said. “His father only promoted me because I can read, and God knows learning to do that was a mistake.” He paused and looked down at a pile of papers that was sat on the desk. They looked important, but unfortunately what María knew was, she imagined, far more important. “And the current Count kept me in my current position because he fears change.” He shrugged. “So I won’t tell him. If you didn’t have anything that directly concerns me to tell me, I think you probably have better things to deal with. I certainly do.”

María could now see where Ferrando’s bad reputation came from, but she could also both understand and — in a strange way — respect it. It wasn’t as though he was pretending to be something or somebody that he wasn’t just to appease her, so she wouldn’t try to do that to him.

“I did have better things to do,” María said, “but I think the fact that my Lady the Countess has taken up with an officer of James Urgell’s army takes priority over refilling wine.”

Ferrando calmly pushed the papers out of the centre of the desk so that he could look at María properly, but Maríá could see from his expression that this was not the news he was either expecting or hoping to receive. “It certainly does,” Ferrando agreed. “I can’t imagine it’s news that my Master the Count will be happy to receive either.” He looked at her for a second again, before moving the papers back over towards the centre of the desk. “And it isn’t something that I can’t tell him, either,” he said. “Sorry.” He didn’t actually sound sorry, but he didn’t sound pleased with it either.

“I didn’t think you’d be able to keep it from him,” María admitted. “Either morally or…” She waved a hand, and Ferrando laughed.

“He’s difficult to keep secrets from.” He looked up at her again, and not for the first time since she had first seen him when she arrived at Aljafería, María found herself wondering exactly how he had lost his eye. Considering how lacking in action he seemed now, he might as well just have been born without it, but she suspected that it wasn’t as simple as that. “How did you find all of this out?”

“I thought you didn’t like to gossip,” María said.

Ferrando nodded. “I don’t. But the Count will want to know how this happened, so I need to know what to tell him. I don’t have much of a taste for storytelling,” he said, his tone dry. “I won’t tell them that it was you who told me, don’t worry.”

“You may as well,” María said. “Lady Leonora will think it was either me or Ines, and she certainly won’t disbelieve Ines. It would probably look better for me if you attached my name to the story outright, as long as you make it clear I gave you my permission to do so.” Ferrando made a gesture that suggested that he thought the idea was stupid but that he still respected it, and grabbed a quill and one of the pieces of paper. “It won’t be long enough to need to write down, not if you don’t need to.”

“Good,” Ferrando said, and put the quill and the knife he had got to sharpen it back down. María only noticed now that he seemed to have been holding the quill in his right hand to sharpen it with his left. María was the same, but she had essentially had it beaten out of her. “I hear far too many rambling confessions that boil down to two or three sentences, and I just end up smudging the ink.” Maríá laughed. “Go on. I’ll take notes if I need to.”

María nodded. “I came into the Countess’ bedroom half way through a conversation between her and her companion Ines.”

“I know her, yes,” Ferrando said. He didn’t look too pleased to have to hear about her, though.

“I heard her — I heard the Countess, that is — saying something about somebody coming to her window every night, so I thought I ought to stay to find out what it was. In case she was in any danger.” Ferrando nodded, now fidgeting with the knife he had started to sharpen the quill with. He probably wouldn’t need to take notes, so that was fair. “They stopped immediately as I came into the room, so I took the hint and left as quickly as I could, but I didn’t close the door fully so I could listen in on their conversation without their knowing — or at least I don’t think they knew.”

Ferrando nodded, even though he wasn’t looking directly at her. Had she not guessed that he was just contemplating what he was going to have to tell his Master the Count, and what the best way to phrase the bad news was, she would have looked behind her to see if there was a clock. “Well, I don’t think I would confess to having an affair with an officer of my husband’s enemy’s army if I thought there was somebody listening in on the conversation,” he said finally, to let her know that she could carry on. He really was not good at this smalltalk business, but it wasn’t what María had come to the barracks for.

“I heard her say that she had a lover who visits her every night, and then…” She decided not to mention Leonora and Ines’ theorising about what Ferrando and Di Luna might have wanted to do to each other, or at least not to one of the subjects of the theory. “Well, you know how people get during conversations. But she said that her lover was one of James Urgell’s men. I think he might be one of Urgell’s officers, but I can’t quite remember — I can’t read or write, so I couldn’t make notes.”

Ferrando nodded. “They wouldn’t want a ladies’ maid who was literate for that very reason.” Well, María supposed that that made sense, but that wasn’t all she had to confess to having heard. Ferrando stopped fidgeting with the knife at last, and asked, “Did she mention his name? Or anything that we might be able to use to identify him, if it came to it?”

María couldn’t tell if that was something that was essential to what he was going to tell the Count or if he personally wanted to know, but she had an answer either way. “I remember she said he was massive, and that she saw him at a tournament for the first time,” María said. “Oh — she also said that you and the Count were at that tournament too, and I think that she said that Ines was too.” She gave Ferrando a moment to write before she started again. “I think his name was—”

“—Manrico. I know who he is now.” Something in Ferrando’s expression had changed now, but María couldn’t for the life of her figure out what he was thinking now. Instead of trying to continue the conversation, because Ferrando clearly didn’t want to do that, María nodded. “Well, that is… truly remarkable.” He scribbled something down, but even if she had been able to read, María doubted that she would have been able to make the letters out. She could very much see what he meant by saying that his hand smudged the ink when he tried to write — she had to wonder how he could read it, let alone anybody else.

María looked up at him again, but found that he wasn’t actually looking in her face. “Is that all you need?” she asked. Ferrando nodded, and María got the impression that she ought to return to the servants’ quarters and pack up so that she could leave. She hadn’t thought that it would come to this — she had been in the service of the Countess for several years and she had come to genuinely like her, and she thought that Leonora had come if not to like her then to view her with some sort of affection — but really it was inevitable now that she had given away the affair that she was having to her husband’s favourite Officer.

“I’ll see to it that the Count gives you a good reference,” Ferrando said, somehow pre-empting what she was about to say even though part of his bad reputation was that he didn’t understand people. “I would advise that you leave tonight.” He got up from his chair, and lead the way over to the door to escort María back out again — something that she was glad of, because she didn’t want to have to face the men leering at her again, especially if they were going to assume anything had happened between her and Ferrando, which she was sure that they would. “I certainly won’t tell the Count until tomorrow morning, so that gives you some time to leave, but I’ll ask him for a reference for you now.”

“How if you don’t tell him why I’m leaving?” María was suspicious now.

“People leave their employment at Aljafería all the time.” Ferrando shrugged. “And he signs whatever I put in front of him.” When María opened her mouth to comment on the fact that the reference would need to be written. “And writes whatever I dictate to him.” As they reached the door to the barracks, he slowed down for a second — now that he knew what had happened he seemed to be walking far more quickly, and María was having trouble keeping up without half-way jogging. “I’ll have one of his servants bring the reference to you at… maybe an hour or two after sunset tonight?” he suggested. “Be packed and ready to leave by then — that should give you a head start before the Countess manages to find out anything that she can get angry about.” He looked into the horizon. That probably gave María an hour and a half to pack up all her things. “Not that she would have anything to be angry about if she hadn’t decided to take up with an officer of Urgell’s army, but there you have it.” He shrugged.

María nodded, but before she had time to reply, Ferrando had turned to leave without either saying goodbye or allowing her to, or even to ask any more questions. It was a good thing that María was confident in her abilities — had she not been then this would have absolutely terrified her. As it was, however, she headed back towards the palace, and started thinking about what she actually needed to take with her and what could stay at the palace for whoever became Leonora’s new maid (or, she supposed, whoever was promoted to her old role). Ferrando probably had a lot of things to think about that were more important than a servant of his master’s wife, or a soon-to-be ex servant to be specific, so she couldn’t begrudge him leaving so quickly.

The first thing that Ferrando wanted to do was to tell Di Luna that his wife was having an affair. He had believed the maid who had told him the story — it didn’t sound as though she had any particular reason to want to betray Leonora and she had seemed contrite enough to be believable but not so upset that he had thought that she was lying — but he also knew that if he told Di Luna then he wouldn’t have the presence of mind to actually write the reference for the girl, which would have been extremely mean of him. While Ferrando certainly could be mean he didn’t think think this was an acceptable sort of meanness, so he wasn’t going to — Di Luna would have to write the reference first and then find out the reason for it. That was an acceptable level of meanness, he thought.

“You aren’t busy, I hope.” Ferrando didn’t need to announce himself to Di Luna, and he was very glad to know that Di Luna and Leonora’s marriage was… well, it wasn’t so much circling the drain any more now that he knew that Leonora was definitely having an affair. “Because you need to write a letter of reference for one of Leonora’s maids who has to leave suddenly.”

“Why doesn’t Leonora do it?” Di Luna asked. “Since she knows who you’re talking about, I hope.”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow.” Ferrando didn’t like to lie to Di Luna, but he thought that a lie of omission was probably an acceptable one. “She needs to leave at short notice, so it needs to be now.” Di Luna nodded. “I’ll have one of your servants take it over to her, you don’t need to do anything other than write and sign it.”

“And seal it,” Di Luna said, getting up and going to sit at his desk. “Generic platitudes?” he asked. Not for the first time, Ferrando was struck by the fact that Di Luna trusted him enough to do this — he could have been asking him to write this letter for anybody, but given that Ferrando was basically his only friend it made sense for Di Luna to want to please him. It was a little sad, but, well, it was advantageous to Ferrando. “What’s her name?”

“María.” Ferrando watched as Di Luna somehow managed to find a quill and a pot of ink on the absolute disaster that was his desk, waiting until he was actually paying attention to continue speaking. “And something about selfless conduct, yes,” Ferrando said. As they had been talking a servant, hearing Ferrando mention that he would be needed, had appeared in the room. It wasn’t something that Ferrando could get used to — he was an officer, yes, but he actually worked for his money. Di Luna didn’t do a whole lot most of the time, but he still had servants who were more than happy to do whatever he asked them to.

“And the reason I’m writing this… glowing letter of reference has to wait until tomorrow for a very good reason, I’m sure,” Di Luna said as he began writing.

“Of course,” Ferrando said, sitting down on Di Luna’s bed to let him write without distracting him. Unfortunately he struggled to believe that Di Luna was just going to roll over and accept what he was going to find out, but he could deal with that later. For now, he just needed this reference written. It was really the least he could do, especially considering the maid’s actions.

The main problem with Di Luna, in as much as Ferrando could actually identify any problems with Di Luna from just obviously biased perspective, was the fact that he was so easily distracted. Ferrando himself did perfectly fine with just sitting in perfect silence for a while to let him write without any distractions because if anything was even the slightest bit off about his surroundings, Di Luna would have been completely incapable of focusing on whatever it was he was meant to be doing (and he was often meant to be doing something that would have resulted in him getting completely and utterly side-tracked). He and Ferrando were particularly compatible in this way, but at the same time, well, he knew that it caused contention between Di Luna and the other men.

The servant was also apparently wise to his master’s bizarre personality because he too had left the room when he had realised that Di Luna was doing something that would probably have resulted in him suddenly becoming very easily distracted because it was something that he had to focus on. Ferrando was glad, because otherwise he would have had to tell him to leave, and that would probably have made Di Luna feel bad, so then he wouldn’t be able to focus — basically, most roads with Di Luna lead to the apparently very delicate equilibrium in his head being disturbed. And, unfortunately, the majority of things that either Di Luna or Ferrando would have tried to do to try to mitigate this would have lead Di Luna to feel bad, because he took every rejection, whatever it was, incredibly personally.

That was, of course, another reason that Ferrando was concerned about how Di Luna would react to finding out that Leonora was having an affair — or at least that he had been told very credible rumours that Leonora was having an affair — and with a man who was an officer of his enemy’s army. That was the part that Ferrando personally couldn’t stop turning over in his head — the idea of the defenses of Aljafería being so weak that an agent of James Urgell could get in made him nervous, because of what had happened to V—. He knew that Di Luna could take care of himself, and that he personally could take care of himself too, but the idea was still enough to keep him up at night. He would probably spend many nights awake for the next however many weeks, too, because that was when Di Luna preferred to do his political and military planning.

But the main problem was the fact that Ferrando would have to keep a very close eye on him in the aftermath of his finding out that Leonora was having an affair. Or at least that was the most immediate problem — it would become a far smaller problem, or just one of many problems that would be making up a rich backdrop that Di Luna would be acting completely feral against. Ferrando supposed that he couldn’t blame him, though — he was unmarried because he had no interest in women and it wasn’t as though marrying to put on a show would actually help him in any way because he wasn’t a noble, but he could still imagine that finding out that his wife was having an affair would be traumatic to any man. Di Luna was far more sensitive than most other people and he would probably feel as though his masculinity was being attacked, not that Ferrando saw much in that.

After all, he was attracted to Di Luna, after having known him before he had transitioned (that still didn’t quite feel like the right word, but the right word didn’t seem as though it had been invented yet. Or if it had, neither he nor Di Luna had so far encountered it), and he just wasn’t attracted to women. He knew plenty of the other men were interested in having sex with men but that tended to be where it ended and it was only when there weren’t any women around — not that they weren’t capable of finding camp followers, of course, who would have done things with them that they would have liked. Most of them would go back to their wives and lovers, some of them even to families, after having sex with each other and nobody thought much of it. That was part of what Ferrando liked about being in the army — nobody would question him because they just assumed he was frustrated like the rest of the men.

Of course, Ferrando was not in any way interested in women like the majority of the rest of the men were. He knew that there were a few that were only interested in men, even that some of these men had wives and one or two had children, because he had met the children. It struck him as odd, but he supposed that Di Luna’s father, who had certainly been far more interested in other men than he had been in women, had married and produced children. So what was to prevent lower-ranking men from wanting to have children if they weren’t actually attracted to women. (And it probably provided good cover for their actual feelings.)

Unfortunately, though, it was a subject that Di Luna was touchy about, so he couldn’t imagine that bringing it up would have produced good results. (And he didn’t want to let Di Luna know how he felt, in case he didn’t reciprocate and was disgusted by the idea. Yes, Ferrando would easily have been able to win in a physical altercation, but he also didn’t want to lose him as a friend, or whatever Di Luna currently was.)

Fortunately, Di Luna was quick at writing, but he supposed that was probably because he was keen to find out what was going on. Ferrando usually had trouble keeping secrets from him, but this was probably more intriguing than anything else to him. It would almost be a shame to undeceive him. “So, when are you going to tell me why this selfless young lady is leaving my wife’s staff?” Di Luna asked.

“I told you,” Ferrando said, trying to keep his tone calm even though he was secretly hoping that the entire palace and its compound would be swallowed up by the earth at some point during the night so that he wouldn’t actually have to deal with the implications of telling Di Luna that his wife was having an affair. “I’ll tell you tomorrow morning, after this maid has left.”

Di Luna looked intrigued by that, but it seemed as though he got distracted before he could actually comment on it. Ferrando watched him hold the wax for sealing the letter in the flame, not that he thought there was much danger of an illiterate maid opening the letter of reference to a new employer, since, well, what would she actually be able to do with a document that she couldn’t interpret.

“I’ll hold you to telling me tomorrow,” Di Luna said.

I would rather you hold me to something else, perhaps, Ferrando thought, but he just made a non-committal noise in response because that was not a conversation that he wanted to start, especially not when he was going to have to deliver some extremely bad news to Di Luna tomorrow morning — that would have made things more awkward than even he could bear them becoming. When Di Luna didn’t say anything, he conceded. “And how are you planning to do that, exactly?” Fortunately, Ferrando was one of very few people who understood Di Luna well enough to decode what he wanted to say because he had a direction that he wanted their conversation to go in.

“I’ll get up early and badger you about it,” Di Luna said, shrugging. As he did so, the servant came back into the room to take the letter to give to María.

“Will you indeed?” Ferrando knew Di Luna’s sleep schedule well enough to know that, for Di Luna, waking up even a minute before mid-day counted as ‘getting up early’. Ferrando, on the other hand, was very much a morning person, although he was capable of staying up until late if Di Luna needed him for something. That, however, was not a train of thought that he was interested in taking, so he decided to let it leave the station without him on it. “Maybe I’ll wake you up at an actually early hour, not whatever you think passes as early in the morning,” he teased him. “Make you come for a walk with me.”

“I’m nearly always up early,” Di Luna said, slightly huffily. “God, I can’t imagine what that poor servant thinks we’re going on about.”

Ferrando decided to make the most of Di Luna’s good mood, because this was certainly the last time he would be anything other than furious for a good while. “Staying up until three in the morning doesn’t count as ‘being up early’,” he pointed out, and Di Luna laughed.

“Well, that isn’t fair. I don’t usually go to bed until at least six in the morning,” he said, “and I think that is early for you.”

“Half past five,” Ferrando said, although it probably sounded as though he was bragging about his sleep schedule. This was just how he naturally slept, although he much preferred it during the summer to the winter. In the summer he basically woke up as the sun rose and went to bed when it set but most of the day was spent in darkness — and, more often than not, mud — during the winter. He could abide one or the other, but he resented having to put up with both darkness after roughly the middle of the afternoon and the possibility of his boots getting covered with mud at the same time. “I’ll come and…” He laughed now. “Well, I won’t come and wake you up, you’ll still be awake.”

“You can come and keep me up, then,” Di Luna said, and had he not been completely convinced that Di Luna’s feelings were nothing other than friendly he would have sworn that there was a flirtatious edge to how he was speaking. But he was sure that it was just him wanting it to sound as though he was flirting. (Not that he was above flirting back — he could always say that he was just joking if Di Luna actually tried to call him on it and it would probably, or hopefully, have been forgotten.) “I could probably use a normal sleep schedule and it isn’t as though we couldn’t do something fun with the time, rather than me just being miserable and tired.”

Fortunately, Ferrando wasn’t drinking anything, even though there was wine on the sideboard beside Di Luna’s bed, because if he had been drinking anything he would have spat it out the second Di Luna said that, and then Di Luna would have known the whole sordid thing. (Of course, Ferrando wasn’t so sure now that they had had this conversation that this would have necessarily been a bad thing. He certainly wouldn’t have said that to somebody he didn’t at least have intentions with.)

“You’d be miserable all day anyway, and I actually have a job to do, so I couldn’t keep you company all day.” That was probably a safer thing for him to say anyway — he didn’t want Di Luna to start thinking he was suggesting that they have an affair, even though that was exactly what he wanted to happen.

“I’m sure I could make you want to,” Di Luna said. He got up and went to the sideboard for some wine, and then walked back over to the desk to put the cork back in his pot of ink so that he didn’t accidentally knock it everywhere. That was a good thing — Ferrando would have pointed it out anyway but he might only have been able to point it out once one or the other of them had knocked it over.

“Have you been drinking all day, then?” Ferrando asked non-committally, because he didn’t want to carry on saying things that were so close to flirtation that they had probably crossed the line into something that he would have to confess on Sunday (of course, Ferrando would never actually confess to it if he and Di Luna did do anything. He was far past caring about what God might have thought about his sex life — and he imagined that He had far more important things to contend with than men falling in love with other men). For another thing, he probably had more than enough “material” for the next God only knew how long. (Suffice it to say that Ferrando would probably also be staying up late.)

“All evening,” Di Luna conceded. That was good — Ferrando couldn’t imagine that Di Luna would want to do anything much but drink tomorrow, so he wanted him to have a bit of a head start. Also, he wouldn’t be too hung over in the morning, although he would probably have been a little grouchy if Ferrando came and woke him up, especially after he had only got a couple of hours of sleep, which would just have made telling him what had happened even less pleasant. “It’s watered down, anyway,” he said.

Ferrando nodded, and went to pour himself a cup of wine, since he knew that Di Luna wouldn’t mind — he would have had the servant remove it if it was particularly fine wine that he didn’t want anybody else to drink. In truth, Ferrando really didn’t drink much, especially not when he had somewhere to be or something important to do the next day, but he couldn’t help thinking that he would need something to drink sooner rather than later. He would have liked just to forget it all, honestly, but he knew that he didn’t actually have that option — there was no way that Di Luna would forget that Ferrando had some secret that probably seemed interesting to him, even if it was actually a very bad thing.

It would certainly be a shame to tell Di Luna, but, well, there wasn’t actually anything that Ferrando could do about that. He would just have to bear the fact that Di Luna was going to have the worst day he had had for several months, or even years, tomorrow and be there to take care of him if he needed it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> leonora and ines' conversation about degrees of consanguinity inspired by me running out of data during a particularly boring church service and reading the tables in a book of common prayer.


End file.
